Well, I just saw "New World," a movie that first and foremost I would best reccomend against, unless you like watching a 2.5 hour movie with roughly 10 minutes of dialogue, and I'm not exaggerating all too much here, most of the movie is a bunch of shots of the woods, people twirling about, and the plotline requires some extra focus to hold together. It is not a movie for someone looking for a lot of armed combat, it's really the story of Pocahontas, but there are a few short parts with conflict between the settlers and the Natives. That being said, I did notice that this film had actually given some value to armor!
Although the combat scenes are few, choppy, etc. there is a scene where the main character (Captain John Smith) is armored in an almost complete harness; he lacks greaves and sabatons, and is ambushed by a group of Native Americans. He is hit several times by primitive clubs with what appear to be sharpened stones in the end, but keeps getting back up. Of course, he looses his sword. At some point in time, he takes an arrow, which looks to get stuck somewhere around the tasset or cuisse, and he pulls it out, himself undamaged. Eventually, he is overwhelmed and captured.
To get to the specifics, the movie takes place in 1605, most of the armor worn is only breast and back plates with comb morion helms, sometimes with pauldrons though Captain Smith, as earlier stated has a near full suit, with a close-helm. Most carry cut-and-thrust swords, halberds or muskets. Smith does not move awkwardly, restricted only by the swampy conditions, not the armor.
Compared to other movies in which armor is entirely useless and/or hindering, it was kind of neat to see an armored character take a bit of a beating, and to be able to because of his armor. As for that arrow, my best guess is that it got caught inbetween the plates of one of his tassets, considering that at least by the mid 1500's armor had started being proofed against bullets, and I'm not sure the punching power of a Native American bow would have been enough to get through the cuisse; though as mentioned earlier, even if it had, Smith certainly didn't seem to take any damage to himself.
So, what's the point of me writing this? Keep up faith! From what I've read here, Tristan and Isolde wasn't a horrid butchery as former movies had been on medieval combat, actually taking steps towards historical accuracy with children training and less flare in the sword combat (I intend to see it sometime soon) and now I've seen armor actually serving a purpose in a movie. Maybe I shouldn't be too optimistic, but perhaps one day we can actually hope to see fully, or failing that, damn-close-to-fully accurate combat in a medieval/renn movie.
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