Armor

A father and son work as security guards transporting money in an armoured truck. The son is a simple man with a pregnant wife, an individual who is a bit neurotic and worried about everything and nothing, while the father is an alcoholic who lost his new wife and young child in a car accident. The tragedy caused him to fall back into the bottle, which has left him struggling to stay afloat and on top of his addiction. Then, during a standard delivery, the father and son come across a group of former special forces soldiers turned robbers, who are after the cargo they are transporting, which they intend to snatch at any cost.

It's downright tragic in many ways when old, popular stars, and in this case even film icons like Sylvester Stallone (and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Clint Eastwood, and others), don't seem to realise that their age makes them inappropriate for shuffling around in front of the camera like a shadow of their former selves. In my world, this is downright undignified, something that Armor is very much proof of.

Stallone is 78-years-old. He has tortured his body with daredevil stunts, steroids, surgeries and everything in between over the years, making him look just as old as he is now. Sly can barely walk upright anymore. He struggles to hold an automatic rifle without it looking like a mess, he slurs (more than ever) when he speaks, and thus does not succeed in trying to portray a grizzled, deadly, hardcore professional criminal with any kind of credibility. It looks as if the retirement home around the corner has let out their oldest resident as an acting thief on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon.

Sly and his thieves face the father and son duo (we never find out their names) on an old rusty, abandoned bridge in the middle of nowhere while trying to break into the bulletproof truck. Here begins what director Justin Routt clearly intended to be a nerve-wracking, nail-biting story of pressure, stress and hard men doing hard things. The father and son lock themselves in the truck while Stallone and his cronies fire thousands of rounds from their assault rifles at it, which in the end only results in me as a viewer witnessing CGI-based muzzle flashes and hits that look like they were made in Microsoft Word while the hardened robbers make more faces than a circus clown.

This goes on for an hour or so, and nothing more than that happens either. Stallone tries to have a little chat with the father and son, saying a few tough things like they're "fried" and should give up, while the dad inside the truck (Jason Patric) responds in kind that he's an ex-cop who's tough and resilient and that he and his son will never give up. And so it goes on, for a good half an hour (or more). Then the film ends in the most abrupt way I think I've seen all year, and it's pretty easy to conclude that this is the worst film of the year so far. I read that Stallone made $10 million for seven hours of work in this film, and while that's impressive in its own way, it's also a ridiculous example of how we treat one of cinema's biggest action stars today.

Whatever you do, and however exciting you might find a hunched, slurring 78-year-old who closes his eyes when he fires blanks, do not, under any circumstances, watch Armor. At all. In fact, you should forget that this film even exists entirely.