A young security guard takes a job he thinks will be straightforward, and within days he is being asked to help steal the very money he was hired to protect. That is the tight, uncomfortable corner at the heart of Armored, the 2009 heist thriller now streaming on Netflix.
The film follows Ty Hackett, a war veteran who joins an armored truck company where several of his colleagues, including his godfather, pressure him into a scheme to steal forty two million dollars in cash. What starts as a plan that sounds almost clean quickly unravels, and Ty finds himself trapped between loyalty to the men he works with and the weight of doing the right thing.
What makes Armored worth your Friday night is how relatable that central tension is. Most of us have never robbed an armored truck, but most of us know what it feels like to walk into a new job and slowly realize the environment is not what you signed up for. The pressure to go along, to not make waves, to protect people you care about even when they are wrong, that is the real story here.
The cast carries it well, with Columbus Short, Matt Dillon, Laurence Fishburne, and Jean Reno all doing solid work in a film that moves fast and does not overstay its welcome at under ninety minutes.
If you have ever started fresh somewhere and felt the ground shift under your feet before you even got settled, this one will hit differently than you expect.
Originally published by BusinessDay.