Armored is a 2009 heist thriller directed by Nimród Antal from a first-ever spec script by James V. Simpson. It runs a lean 88 minutes and stars Matt Dillon as Cochrane and Columbus Short as Ty Hackett, a decorated Iraq war veteran raising his younger brother alone, alongside Jean Reno, Laurence Fishburne, Skeet Ulrich, Milo Ventimiglia, Amaury Nolasco and Fred Ward as a crew of armoured truck guards who decide to rob their own employer.

I want to start with something I only discovered after watching it, because the timing is genuinely remarkable. Seventeen years after this film came out and quietly underperformed, it is currently climbing the streaming charts. As in right now, this week. An article published the same day I sat down to write this describes it as one of the biggest films on streaming at the moment. So either my timing is extraordinary or a great many of us are having the same idea simultaneously.

It is an interesting collection of actors in this, and they all did their job really well. Matt Dillon in particular played his part well, bringing a quiet, worn authority to Cochrane that holds the early stretch together. A critic at the time made the point that it is good to see old professionals like Dillon, Reno, Fishburne and Ward demonstrating to the younger members of the cast how to take potentially shop-worn material and make it their own, and that is precisely what is happening. Everybody here has done this a hundred times and knows exactly how to make it land.

Then there is Columbus Short, and this is the part of the film I have thought about most.

I came away convinced they were trying to build him into a massive superstar at the time, and the record bears that out. He and Dillon were announced as the two leads back in October 2007, a full two years before release. He was being positioned to carry the film, and the structure of the story makes him the moral centre and the last man standing.

Roughly 2007 to 2010 really was his moment. Which makes it genuinely sad to say that I could not tell you the last thing I saw him in.

I did go and check, and the answer is not a happy one. The role most people would know him from is Scandal, which he departed in 2014. There has not been anything approaching that level since. That window I was thinking about really was the window, and it closed.

Critics at the time were sharply divided about him, for what it is worth. Variety described him as capably taking the lead. Another review was considerably harsher, saying he fails to evoke any sympathy for a predicament he largely created himself. I landed somewhere in the middle. He is fine. The film simply never gives him the weight to carry.