Netflix has found yet another action thriller global thriller smash hit. The popular platform has already delivered all manner of massive genre successes with its own movies and shows such as Rebel Ridge, the Extraction franchise, and The Night Agent, to name a few, while giving new life to lesser-known and largely forgotten action efforts from years gone by. In this case, it’s the latter, with Netflix offering redemption to an all-star 98-minute action thriller that’s one-part Jason Statham and one-part Heat.
A Heist Comes to a Halt Thanks to the Elite New Recruit
Led by a stellar cast in Matt Dillon, Jean Reno, Laurence Fishburne, Amaury Nolasco, Milo Ventimiglia, Skeet Ulrich, and Columbus Short, and directed by Nimród Antal, who has since gone to helm the likes of Predators (the best Predator follow-up until Prey came along), the Liam Neeson action outing Retribution, and Dave Bautista’s post-apocalypse epic Afterburn, Armored was released in 2009 and centers on a good man forced to confront bad ones while trapped inside the titular armored vehicle.
The action thriller begins when a crew of officers at an armored transport security firm embark on a heist against their own company. Armed with a seemingly fool-proof plan, the group plan on making off with a fortune without harming anyone. But when the new recruit isn’t on board, and has the skills needed to stop them, their plan quickly unravels and the violence soon starts.
Led by Scandal and The Losers star Columbus Short as former military veteran and new recruit Ty Hackett, with Crash and Wild Things star on magnetic villain duty as the group’s leader Mickey “Mike” Cochrane, Armored follows a similar path to Jason Statham and Guy Ritchie’s 2021 hit Wrath of Man, merging the action thriller with Michael Mann’s heist masterpiece Heat, before adding a dash of Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs by picking up after the robbery and largely forcing the action into one isolated location.
‘Armored’ Was Panned Upon Release but Has Now Found an Audience Thanks to Netflix
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Sony Pictures -
Sony Pictures -
Sony Pictures
Despite its star-studded cast and wonderfully simple action thriller plotting, Armored failed to impress anyone at the time. Landing scores of 42% and 31% from critics and audiences, respectively, on Rotten Tomatoes, as well as tanking at the box office with a worldwide gross of just $23.7 million against a budget of $20 million, Armored seemed destined to be lost to the cinematic ether.
But a new streaming release on Netflix has allowed Armored to find some serious redemption, with the action thriller now climbing the global top 10 all the way up to the third spot, as per the latest Tudum chart. Thanks to its recognizable cast and no-nonsense plot that promises both action and suspense, Armored is now officially one of the biggest global streaming hits right now, with the 17-year-old action thriller standing alongside the likes of Ridley Scott’s long-awaited Gladiator II, the John Wick-esque action outing Blackout, and Ben Affleck’s widely panned crime thriller Animals, which holds onto the #1 spot.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
