Armed review — somber yet gory action satire that's step away from greatness

Armed explodes onto the screen with the soul of 90s B movies but the production quality of modern cinema. When a team of ex-soldiers set out to steal a shipment of weapons, they find themselves hunted by an artificial would-be replacement, a Ken-Doll-esque soldier with all of their skills but none of their hangups. The film’s failure to lean into its own most interesting ideas detracts from the experience, but there’s much to be found in this scifi action horror hybrid, and it’s more than piqued my interested in the other works by this team; director Neil Mackay and writer Terry McDonald have collaborated on action horror with unusual concepts, and I can tell they’re a team very worth investigating.

I would prefer not to even explain Armed's main conceit. This is a movie best seen without knowing where it’s headed, due to the way it slowly builds tension and atmosphere while framing and obscuring its developments. Though the movie features over the top gore and action, sometimes leaning into full black comedy, it starts out with a genuine feeling of desperate grime. Rarely have I seen lighting that manages to be both atmospheric and naturalistic at the same time, but cinematographer Martin Wisniewski pulls great strength out of the dreary urban fluorescent lights, and dispassionate forest sunlight filtered through trees. Production designer Sandra Hartman also deserves some praise, with many small details tucked away in costumes or room decorations.

Formally, some of the details are off. Though there are some beautiful, memorable shots, too often is the film beset by workmanlike closeups during dialogue. All of that falls away as the film spirals into chaos, its action ramping up as the tension mounts and its characters realize how deep they’ve dug their own graves. Those characters are another point of complexity. With all of them being some variation on grizzled veteran, it can be hard to tell them apart. This could have been solved by relying on their pasts. Maybe one was a sniper, another a medic, and the last the commander, but that level of depth isn’t seen in Armed.

The sound design similarly left me with mixed feelings. Armed features a moody, tense soundtrack that would have been more effective if it had been a little less pronounced. The main antagonist has many voice lines that are buried under other effects to the point that they’re nearly inaudible, leaving me unsure if I’m missing important information or if there’s some naturalistic intent behind how little I can make out.

As an overall experience, there’s much that I like about Armed. Its plot features a deliberate build of tension from the mundane to the surreal, guiding us through the character’s own heads as they try to sort out the truth of their situation and scratch out some method of survival. The action direction is a treat, the effects are a joy to behold, and the sparse moments of outright violence are built up with enough gravitas that they pack a meaty punch.

All that said, I’m struck by all the ways that Armed doesn’t develop its own ideas. Much of the plot and even individual scenes are lifted directly from Predator and Terminator. It’s very familiar to see an ostensibly elite group hunted by a superior force, turned into the underdogs as they struggle to cope with the new dynamic. But every time I thought Armed would say more or strike out on its own, the movie falters. There’s so much to be said conceptually about the frailty of human soldiers, and why the military would want to replace them. You could play it straight, challenging them to use their humanity as a strength. You could make it a comedy, toying with all the problems that a “perfect soldier” would have if designed by a board room. How would it react to civilians? How would it go overboard trying to enforce the perfect vision? That’s what I thought I was getting with a plastic looking antagonist:  A Fallout-esque lampooning of the black and white mentality that underscored anti-communist propaganda. Maybe that detail was lost in the garbled voice lines.

Armed even hints at bringing some of the ideas up; the project was built on the cheap with foreign parts. Think of the comedy you could get from that! Unfortunately, all of the ways this might have failed turn out to be strengths. The machine, after all, succeeds pretty handily on its mission. It only hunts those who are, in the framing of the film, traitors to the government people. You could make something of the idea that war ruins veterans and turns them into desperate, broken men, and Armed reaches for but never quite achieves that level of introspection. I’m not mad at Armed, but I am disappointed with it. There’s clear talent on this team, and I hope to see that talent leveraged to full effect in their other films.

Armed is available now on Amazon Prime and Apple Tv+.