Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		1.5

Armed Response Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 10, 2017

Wesley Snipes’ well publicized travails with the Feds over alleged tax improprieties, a situation which actually ended with Snipes being imprisoned for several years, may account for the actor’s participation in a lamentable enterprise like Armed Response. After all, there are attorneys to pay and delinquent taxes to reimburse, right? But why any number of other folks like Anne Heche, WWE “superstar” Seth Rollins (fresh from his spectacular big screen debut in Sharknado: The 4th Awakens) and Gene Simmons (who, along with Snipes, co-produced) are involved is a question for the ages (or something like that), though the sole supplement accompanying this release has most of the actors effusing about being in a project with Snipes and Simmons. In a setup that plays a bit like an unconvincing mishmash of elements culled from The Belko Experiment and any given episode of The X-Files, Armed Response offers a coterie of CIA black ops types who are investigating mysterious doings at a fortress like facility known as the Temple, a high tech operation invented by Gabriel (Dave Annable), which is utilized in “renditions” of terrorists. The Temple includes an AI component which is able to magically read the minds of alleged perpetrators, though as the film documents in its opening melee, there’s some kind of ghost in the machine which takes out the staff. To the outside world, the Temple has suddenly gone “offline”, and without any clues about what’s gone on inside, an investigation is begun. That gets Gabe’s former boss Isaac (Wesley Snipes) involved, who in turn comes out to Gabe’s remote refuge to recruit him to help find out what happened. Gabe is one of those wounded soul types, still trying to recover from the devastating death of his young daughter, but of course he jumps right back into the fray, reteaming with former cohorts Riley (Anne Heche) and Brett (Seth Rollins). The bulk of the rest of the film posits this crew, along with a few others, inside the Temple, where (no surprise here) they quickly discover the corpses of the former staff and then (also unsurprisingly) find themselves trapped in the facility with some kind of supernatural force which is intent on — well, does it matter, really?

While there are some salient differences between The Belko Experiment and Armed Response, the films share two elements, including being set in a high tech fortress like facility where the “employees” are trapped and are being slaughtered one by one. The biggest similarity, and not a helpful one, is that both films offer types instead of actual characters. It’s almost bizarre in a way how Matt Savelloni’s screenplay trots out tragedy for Gabriel but resolutely refuses to provide even a hint of background information for several other characters in the film.

That deficit is accompanied by some structural issues that the film also labors mightily to overcome. With what amounts to a quick flashback (which is where Simmons shows up), the Temple’s “sentient” qualities are documented, but then once the team gets to the Temple, an almost insane amount of time is spent with them wandering the hallways looking for the missing staff. Even after they find the corpses, things don’t materially pick up momentum. Logical inconsistencies abound, with another terrorist (Mo Gallini) showing up out of the blue insisting he was “invited” there, which makes the fact that Temple seemed to think it needed to kill the previous staff in order to get the current crew there look like a bit of bad planning.

By the time a number of revelations are doled out that supposedly cast everything that’s been assumed about a number of the characters in a new light, most viewers will have ceased to care, though if there’s any audience emotional attachment to any of these characters in the first place, that would come as a surprise to me personally. There’s a curious kind of subtext hovering just beneath the surface of Armed Response which seems to suggest sometimes American “heroes” can be terrorists themselves, which is certainly an interesting if obviously provocative thesis. Unfortunately, Armed Response doesn’t know how to artfully exploit a potentially thoughtful examination of issues like this, and instead gives way to long, lingering shots of people wandering through dimly lit hallways.

Armed Response Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Armed Response is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. No technical data on the film is readily available online (that I could find, anyway), but this was digitally shot and offers a generally decent if at times problematic looking transfer. There's some minor image instability in a number of aerial shots, especially early in the film, and the bulk of the Temple footage is awash in some muddy lighting conditions which don't really support fine detail levels. When lighting conditions allow, and when the camera is more or less stationary, detail levels improve markedly. There are what look to be lo-res sources used at times (as in things like closed circuit footage and the like), some of which looks pretty shoddy (see screenshot 19). Some of the CGI is a little iffy, but a lot of it takes place in such dimly lit environments that it's arguably not as bad looking as it might have otherwise been.

Armed Response Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Perhaps surprisingly, Armed Response's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is consistently immersive and offers a glut of extremely forceful LFE. A lot of the sound mix is kind of hokey, frankly, but it's energetic much of the time, adding at least a little oomph to an otherwise draggy enterprise. Dialogue, effects and score are all rendered cleanly and clearly, with great prioritization and wide dynamic range.

Armed Response Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Inside the Minds of Armed Response (1080i; 15:33) is a perhaps ironically titled featurette for such a patently brain dead enterprise, but it does contain one priceless moment of Simmons, evidently channeling his Method Actor, asking John Stockwell what his "inside" motivation is for one scene.

Armed Response Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It's probably churlish to state that Snipes has jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire with regard to getting out of stir only to make something as underdeveloped and ultimately kind of silly as Armed Response. Video has occasional stumbles, but audio is first rate, for those considering a purchase.