Most people will take one look at Nimród Antal’s “Armored” and be immediately tempted to write it off as the kind of B-movie action thriller that you’d only watch if you were stuck home alone on a weekend. It really isn’t that bad, but with all the talent that’s involved, it should have been a whole lot better. Columbus Short stars as Ty Hackett, a decorated war hero who returns home to take care of his younger brother after their parents pass away. Although his godfather, Mike (Matt Dillon), gets him a job working alongside him as a security guard for an armored truck service, Ty still struggles to make ends meet. Desperate to get some quick cash before he loses his house to the bank, Ty begrudgingly agrees to join Mike and their co-workers in a plot to steal the $42 million they’re transporting and make it look like a robbery.

After all, it’s a foolproof plan with no “bad guys.” At least, that’s what everyone thinks until a nosey bum is accidentally killed in the process and Ty locks himself inside the truck with half of the payload. With the clock ticking down to their scheduled check-in with headquarters, Mike and his team get to work on removing the door, only for a meddlesome cop (Milo Ventimiglia) to get in the way. The further along the movie gets, the more ridiculous it becomes, with a series of preventable plot holes riddling the story like a piece of Swiss cheese. The film’s biggest crime, however, is its misuse of the cast. You’d think Antal would want to make the most of actors like Laurence Fishburne, Jean Reno, and even Skeet Ulrich, and yet each one is barely given more than a few lines. Had they played a bigger role in the movie, “Armored” might have been more entertaining, but as it stands, it’s something you’ll likely forget the minute it’s over.

Click to buy “Armored”

Mama Petrelli’s cool delivery never fails to entertain me, especially tonight, when she calmly and carefully laid out the method by which her son should kill her husband. I appreciate Peter’s insistence that he has to be the one to take out his father, but you’d think he’d at least be willing to accept the help of the Haitian. But, noooooooo, it’s gotta be his responsibility…

Despite our readers’ suspicions to the contrary, Elle sure looked pretty damned dead to me when the episode began, and when Sylar covered her in gasoline and set her ablaze…well, if she isn’t dead, she’s at least going to be extra crispy. It was, of course, nice to see the unequivocally evil Sylar return, but the highlight had to be when Sue Landers’ co-workers burst in on him while he was in mid-attack. “Cake…?” Nice. The moment in the elevator was pretty funny, too. (“Huh. It does kind of tingle.”)

The bit with Claire and Hiro chattering back and forth to each other with neither knowing what the other was saying was pretty funny, but you’d think Claire had never seen a time-travel movie before. Doesn’t even the ditziest cheerleader know that you can’t change your own past without causing a paradox? Apparently not, since she promptly went to go hang out with her mom and…herself. The scene with Claire and HRG was cheesy, particularly with HRG’s smirk when he repeated, “Claire bear,” but Jack Coleman’s intensity was as solid as ever, and – surprise! – Hayden Panitierre actually pulled off a solid performance, so it was a hell of a lot better than it could’ve been.

“Where is train station? I must use toilet. More waffles please.” Funny how, when Hiro had that reaction about the chance to see his mother, I realized that we hadn’t really seen his mother before. (I guess I just got so caught up in the excitement of Sulu playing his father that I didn’t really think about it.) So she had a terminal disease and she was a healer…? Hell of a family, these Nakamuras. When Mr. Nakamura made the comment about having Noah bring back the baby and the missus said that she’d rather keep it in the family, I figured, “Okay, it must be Hiro’s sister,” who I remembered that we had seen before, back when Hiro had to step up to bat at the company in the wake of his father’s demise. Unlike Claire and HRG, the scene between Hiro and his mother was both well-performed and well-written, particularly the moment when he said, “I remember how much I miss you.” Which of us wouldn’t take the opportunity to go back in time and visit with a deceased relative if we knew it wouldn’t change anything? And what a sweet concept, to know that he was able to go back to see his mother and tell her everything he would accomplish long after her death.

You know, I forgot to mention last week how amused I was that the Comic Book Guys finally brought up the point I’d wondered about earlier in the season, about who the hell’s been handling “9th Wonder” since Isaac bit the big one. Now Ando, Matt, and Daphne are on the trail of the bike messenger who swiped Isaac’s sketchbook…and, man, don’t ever try to ride your bike to safety when you’re being chased by a speedster. The contents of the sketch book, however, made my head hurt. So, what, are the sketches within the book changing as events occur in the past? I understand time is fluid, but it’s hard even for an experienced sci-fi guy such as myself to wrap my head around some of this stuff.

So after following Hiro and Claire back through time, Arthur Petrelli had the catalyst, which meant that he could perfect the formula and give people powers…and because of that, Ando found himself thinking that maybe he, too, could acquire the ability to travel through time and thereby save Hiro from his position as a flagpole hanger-on? Ow. OW. My head. Of course, it doesn’t hurt nearly as much as Papa’s probably does. I liked the way they tied the whole story up, with Sylar’s new abilities allowing him to confirm that Papa was lying about his parentage; I have to admit that I didn’t really think about that when he stole the lie-detector ability – though I’m probably the only one – so I was surprised to see him appear to (briefly) stop the bullet from striking Papa. And, hey, Sylar, way to totally harsh Peter’s buzz with that last comment, you dick.

Is it this end of Papa Petrelli? Did the catalyst leave him and enter Peter…? We shall see.

After this week’s twist that Daphne could also see him, I really thought for sure that maybe he wasn’t just some twisted creation of Nathan’s psyche, but now we know that he’s actually nothing more than the work of one of Papa Petrelli’s minions. That’s right: we finally got the big reveal of Robert Forster this week, which I’ll get to in more detail in a bit. First, let’s talk about some of the other goings-on from this episode.

Sorry, but Moninder has reached the point of ridiculousness now. I was accepting the similarities to “The Fly,” but…really? He’s taking down people in the park, dragging their bodies home in a manner so careless that he’s literally leaving a trail of blood behind him, and then he’s…cocooning them? Give me a break. The only possible up side to the storyline at this point is that we may soon see the last of Maya, but somehow I suspect that we couldn’t possibly be that lucky.

The character of Knox is one where you have to wonder what the writers were thinking. He’s got the power to create black holes. Sure, it’s an awesome super power, but it’s such an awesome power that it gets you to thinking things like, “How the hell does someone develop this kind of ability as a result of a serum?” And from there, it’s only a hop, skip, and a jump over to questioning all the other highly non-biological abilities amongst the characters…like there aren’t enough flaws in the show’s various premises. As far as how Claire handled Knox, well, it’s just another typical Claire scenario: she makes a headstrong move without thinking it through, gets swayed by someone telling her a sob story, decides to trust her father, and gets the shaft. Clearly, she gets the headstrong nature from her mother, since Meredith proceeds to brag about how she can light fires, only to get herself captured by one of the bad guys. Embarrassing.

I don’t really get HRG anymore. I understand that he wants revenge on Sylar for what he did to his daughter, but the idea of having Knox open a black hole and let him be sucked into it just seemed ridiculous, especially with Sylar standing right there. I guess we were supposed to presume that Sylar couldn’t quite hear what was being said from that distance, but it wasn’t like they were that far away.

The Hiro / Ando / Adam triangle was pretty entertaining this week, with Hiro’s best line occurring when he informed Ando, “He said look tough, not like Mr. Roboto,” but I probably laughed hardest when Adam referred to Hiro as a “Japanese Nazi.” The idea that there’s a bar somewhere where Specials hang out to find work is one that’s cool enough to warrant its own spin-off. As for Hiro stabbing Ando, it was shocking, but it was also so unlikely that you know there’s gotta be a catch.

I like that they’re not just dismissing the effects that Peter’s absorption of Sylar’s powers is having on him, particularly since they resulted in a couple of really dark moments this week, including the snapping of Sylar’s neck (and his subsequent recovery) and what looked for all the world like it would be Mama Petrelli’s final moments on the planet. The honest moments between Nathan and Tracy where the latter was admitting what she’d done to the Greatest American Reporter were nice, though something didn’t ring true about the rather casual way they just popped ’round to pay Mama and Peter a visit at the Company. You know, I just don’t think this organization is nearly as secret as it’s supposed to be…

Okay, onto the last few minutes of the episode, where we finally meet Papa Petrelli and see the brilliant Robert Forster for…what, maybe 30 seconds of screen time, tops? And that’s only if we include the distant shot of his picture in the file on Mama’s desk. So Parkman’s dad…who it took me a minute to recognize…is working for Papa Petrelli, who seems to be paralyzed. Okay, fair enough, since we’d been led to believe he was dead for all this time, anyway. He’s clearly a major power player, given that he’s capable of paralyzing Mama from afar (I loved the scene where she believed that Nathan, Tracy, and Peter were all dead), but he still needs someone to do his physical dirty work for him.

Next week, lines are blurred between heroes and villains. Fair enough, I’m ready…if only because I want to see how long it’s going to take Daphne to find Matt Parkman. I mean, sure, she’s fast, but he doesn’t even know where he is!

Addendum: When writing this blog entry at 2 AM, I accidentally referred to the character of Stephen Canfield as Knox. My apologies to both Andre Royo (Canfield) and Jamie Hector (Knox).

Even with all of the advances in special-effects technology, it’s clear that we will never successfully reach a point where an actor can perform a scene with himself and not have it feel cheesy…or maybe it’s just because the only difference in Milo Ventimiglia’s PresentPeter and FuturePeter voices was that the latter was a tiny bit more growly. Either way, while the scene of the two Peters chatting with each other worked surprisingly well when they were interacting in the crowd, as soon as they headed down the alleyway and the focus of the scene was solely on them, I was very much in “gimme a break” mode. Fortunately, FutureClaire put a couple of caps in FuturePeter before I had to worry about it too much.

I liked the way FutureMohinder was couched in shadows, hissing his words, but what I really liked was that transition from the present to the future, with Mohinder’s voice slowing down on the tape recorder as it suddenly gained a coat of dust and a cockroach running over top of it. A small moment, but an awesome one. It was also good to see Molly again (kids grow up so fast these days), and the relationship between Parkman and Daphne is an intriguing one, to be sure.

At first, the whole Sylar-goes-domestic scene seemed to be done solely for silliness, but it ended up working surprisingly well to establish how far he’d come in four years’ time. So given FutureSylar’s son’s name, are we to presume that Noah is A) Claire’s daughter, and B) HRG’s grandson? That would make sense, since you can certainly imagine that the company would love a chance to combine two of its most powerful assets. The idea of PresentPeter going into the future and stealing FutureSylar’s abilities in order to return to the present and keep that future from ever coming to pass in the first place is enough to make anyone’s head spin, but despite the implausibilities, I really liked most of the sequence. FutureSylar’s speech to PresentPeter as the latter fixed the former’s watch was delivered with just the right touch of drama, and to get not one oh-shit moment (Noah getting nailed by a flying table) but two oh-shit moments (FutureSylar losing his fucking mind and going nuclear) was way more than I ever expected. It was tarnished a bit by the complete and total scientific impossibility that even the ostensibly immortal FutureClaire could’ve survived being at Ground Zero of a nuclear blast, let alone PresentPeter – I can accept a lot, people, but not that much – but, then, we got PresentPeter coming within an inch of popping FutureNathan’s skullcap off, which was pretty cool. Furthermore, the concept of Peter being cursed with Sylar’s hunger is one which should prove interesting in future weeks.

Seriously, though, how long is this back-and-forth thing with Hiro and Ando going to go on? I know it’s only the fourth episode of the season, but for all of the fun their scenes have brought us with Daphne, I’m already sick of Hiro questioning Ando’s friendship. Good thing Mama Petrelli has brought Adam back into the picture; that ought to to shake things up a bit.

Though it spends much of its time dealing with the dead, you’d expect a movie like “Pathology” to have a little more life to it. After all, it was created by the writing team behind “Crank” – quite possibly the most over-the-top movie ever made. Of course, with Milo Ventimiglia headlining the cast, it’s no wonder the film feels a lot duller than it should have been. The “Heroes” star does his best Hayden Christensen impression as Ted Grey, a brilliant medical student who’s just joined the nation’s most prestigious pathology program. When he arrives, however, he’s seduced into playing a twisted game with some of the other interns that involves them taking turns murdering strangers, while the others figure out how it was done. Think of it as Medical Clue, but much more boring than it sounds, because there isn’t a single horrific or suspenseful moment in the film, despite the fact that that is how it’s being marketed. Even worse is that the audience has no one to root for. Sure, Ted is supposed to be the good guy in the movie, but are we really supposed to forgive all of his faults (cheating, killing, using, etc.) as someone who’s simply taken a wrong turn in live? Puh-lease. Only Michael Weston is given a role with any real meat on it, but even his crazy antagonist is never given the attention it deserves. Now, if the film followed him around instead of Milo, maybe we’d have something interesting to watch. It might not be “American Psycho,” but it would definitely be better than this.

Click to buy “Pathology”