NOW STREAMING - Outside the Wire (2021)

 

"Outside the Wire" is the newest war movie on Netflix. Actually, it is a sci-fi movie that fits in the war genre.  It was directed by Mikael Hafstrom. 

Set in 2036, a drone pilot named Harp (Damson Idris) disobeys orders and launches a Hellfire missile to save a pinned down unit of American peacekeepers in a civil war in the Ukraine. He is demoted to the infantry and assigned to an android named Leo (Anthony Mackie). Leo needs Harp's help in a mission behind enemy lines to prevent a warlord from launching a nuclear attack on America.  It’s a lot more complicated than that, but I’ll let you figure it out for yourself. 

It's farfetched for a war movie, but not for a sci-fi movie. The movie's strengths are the kick ass combat that features robot soldiers (called "gumps").  They work alongside grunts who look no different from today. The movie opens strong with a ballistic-expending night scene where two soldiers are penned down by rebels.  This is intercut with Harp chewing gummy bears and steering a drone from a trailer in Nevada.  One theme of the movie is contrasting the pristine video game war with the nasty on the ground war.  Harp gets a taste of both so we can.  And so he can see the collateral damage when drone pilots pull the trigger.  Another set piece has American gumps facing off with Russian gumps - with civilians caught in the middle.  It’s not just missiles that cause collateral damage. 

Another strength is the plot has a twist that is ridiculous, but it’s a sci-fi movie so... What keeps it from being a good movie is the uneven blend of futuristic with current technology. Apparently, our weapons will not improve much in the next 15 years, but we will make great strides in robotic soldiers and ginormous strides in android technology. (Too much, if you ask the movie.)  The movie is not an advertisement for artificial intelligence. 

The big casting coup was getting Mackie to play Leo.  He is definitely slumming as he plays Leo as more human than android.  If it wasn’t for some super-soldier ass-kicking, you would just think he was your typical prick.  The advances in android emotions in the next 15 years are going to be incredible.  And yet, we still won’t have jet packs!  Idris is weak and does not strike the right tone for a cocky drone jockey who is thrown into a charnel house that he has no training for.  In a movie full of holes, having this disgraced newbie accompany Leo on an extremely difficult and super important mission is the most head-scratching.

 We are seeing an increasing number of movies in the drone warfare subgenre. This one is not in a league with "Eye in the Sky" and "Good Kill", but it does have the common theme that the use of drones is problematic. This one is more heavy-handed than most. In a ham-handed scene, Harp visits an orphanage full of kids whose parents were killed by drones!  A corollary theme is that America gets involved in other nations’ business for ulterior motives.

Unfortunately, “Outside the Wire” does not finish strong as the last act is silly and full of cliches. Still, it is a nice time-waster with plenty of action and some thought-provoking elements (but try not to think about it).

GRADE = C+