Fridae

It has been said (and not in jest either) that film noir shines brightest when the economy is in the darkest shade of midnight. In fact Werner Herzog, in an interview with the Telegraph, stated his belief the recession will lead to a renaissance in the genre.

Sharing his conviction is up-and-coming director Nimrod Antal, who brings us a heist film set in a decaying inner city suffering from the effects of the financial meltdown. The premise is simple: an entire team of truckers for a security firm decide to pull off a heist on their own delivery of US$42 million from the US Treasury. Their botched execution of the heist and the subsequent falling unravelling of the gang is the main concern of this film.

I have nothing but the greatest respect for Mr Antal, who proved his creativity in his first film Kontroll and his competence in his first Hollywood outing, a genre film called Vacancy. Whether he’s doing something out of love or to build his portfolio, one could be assured of above-average direction and uncommon insights from his work. In Armored, Antal’s direction and sense of visuals does indeed elevate the film from its strictly genre roots and straight-to-DVD destiny.

Yet something seems to have gone wrong with either the scripting or production. For a heist film, this is no real ensemble piece – aside from Columbus Short’s Everyman figure, no other member of the team has character or evokes sympathy. The logistics of the heist itself is ridiculously improbable and probably poorly researched, while the handling of the implosion of the team is clumsy at best. And as if to spite Werner Herzog’s expectations of recessions producing good noirs, the script tacks on the happiest of consequence-free endings after 90 minutes of depressing talk about the economy!

We only need to look at Jules Dassin’s Rififi or Jean-Paul Melville’s Bob Le Flambeur to see how a heist movie should work, to figure out why Armored plays out competently but feels severely, even criminally underwritten and half-done – and wish Mr Antal better luck in getting a script worthy of his directorial talent.