Outside the Wire Review: Netflix’s Android action movie raises big questions

Drones have become such an accepted aspect of modern warfare that over the past decade almost every major action franchise has used them as a shortcut to raising the stakes. They’ve fallen into the hands of various villains in a dystopian future, like that of Neill Blomkamp Chappie and Elysium, in high-profile suites like Furious 7, and in the three films of Gerard Butler Olympus has fallen series. In Hollywood’s imagination, terrorists really love mechanized weapons.

But the reality is, the use of drones – or, in official terminology, “unmanned aerial vehicles” – in the US military has grown exponentially, particularly during President Obama’s tenure. The principles of killing people while stationed at an office halfway around the world have been revisited in feature films (2015’s Eye in the sky) and documentaries (2013 Unmanned: the drone war in America). The latest film to explore the ethical ramifications of drones, Netflix’s War of the Future feature film Outside the wire, stumbles with his inability to engage with these ideas, even if he prioritizes them in his construction of the world.

Anthony Mackie’s parallel career paths as a serviceman The Hurt Locker and as Sam Wilson / Falcon in the Marvel Cinematic Universe) and a sci-fi hero (Modified carbon season 2, Synchronous) finally overlap in Outside the wire, Netflix’s latest action film about the US military. (He follows in the footsteps of 6 Underground, Extraction, and Triple frontier before him.) Mackie produced and performed this initially smooth-paced thriller, which pairs a human and an android to explore the differences between man and machine. But the film quickly runs out of steam.

Photo: Jonathan Prime / Netflix

Director Mikael Håfström does not provide Outside the wire with in-depth analyzes of Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics here, all scary as unique as watching Michael Fassbender’s David tinkering in his Ridley Scott lab Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, or any other action game as unforgettable as the tunnel chase in Alex Proyas I robot. The film redeems its monochromatic production design with an eye-catching screenplay from Rob Yescombe and Rowan Athale, who provide Mackie clearly having fun with plenty of pithy one-liners and memorable insults. But broader ideological questions about humanity, artificial intelligence, and whether emotional sincerity or analytical prowess is more important in saving lives end up being intangible in a film that settles on an all too familiar plot rather than dig into the themes he introduces and then abandons.

Outside the wire takes place in Eastern Europe, where a violent civil war has spread and spread: criminal warlord Viktor Koval (Pilou Asbæk) wants to make Ukraine part of Russia, and has received support from the Kremlin in carrying out its terrorist attacks and enlisting others in its cause. Thanks to the involvement of the United States, much of the region has been destroyed and its people are starving. While the United Nations is gone, the United States maintains a presence as a “peacekeeping” force, although in reality this means the military regularly engages in shootings, battles, and attacks. , and are aided by drone pilots, who assess situations from afar and decide when to strike.

One of the best is Lieutenant Thomas Harp (Damson Idris), whose priority is to save as many lives as possible. If that means killing others, so be it. So when two Marines end up dying because Harp broke the chain of command to launch a drone strike that saved 38 other Americans, he rationalizes that he made the right choice (“the call that seemed most correct », He said to a committee of inquiry), but his insubordination is not looked at too much.

As punishment, Harp is sent to Camp Nathaniel in the war zone itself, where his commander Col. Eckhart (Michael Kelly) greets him with “You should be in jail.” Harp’s job as a drone pilot requires a certain type of clinical coldness and a willingness to make tough choices that could literally mean life or death, but even he’s not prepared to learn that he’s been. tasked with helping Leo (Mackie), a prototype of the US government. android was all about winning hearts and minds – and if that doesn’t work, killing those who still disagree or oppose. Leo has feelings and is capable of empathy, he tells the Shocked Harp, but he also has an iridescent flexible metal torso, is a computer genius, and is incredibly difficult to destroy. The US military has developed a new killing machine and given it a human face.

Once the two have met, Leo enlists Harp to help him find and kill Koval, who plans to gain access to the nuclear weapons Russia left behind from the Cold War; If they don’t stop their planned terrorist attacks on the United States, Leo says, no one can. And yet, despite all his awareness of his mission, the orders he has been given and the government he is responsible for, Leo is resentful, bristling and tired. He’s tired of being in this place, of seeing citizens killed in skirmishes between Americans and Ukrainians, and of being forced to ask for information about Koval from people trying to make a difference, like the director of Sofiya orphanage (Emily Beecham). Everything starts to wear on him, so he enlists Harp’s help to help him break out of the wire – military terminology for attacking the enemy. Once Koval is arrested, Leo argues, and the civil war is over, the world will be a better place. Is not it?

Photo: Jonathan Prime / Netflix

During the first hour or so of its execution, Outside the wire sounds much more complex and less patriotic than it actually is. As Leo, Mackie is quick with a sardonic smile and fiery temper, and his repeated mockery of Harp’s naivety with a “Do you think so?” is as funny as his offense when Harp searches for a word to describe him. The action scenes follow each other neatly, with a chase scene and an explosion in a hospital quickly followed by a hostage-taking in a bank; the one-two punch effectively increases the tension. And the film at least references the reality of our time by asking whether the US military, with its endless funding, vast resources, and great moral height, is truly worthy of such prestige. When Sofiya points out that many orphans she shelters are left without families because of American crimes, Harp’s morally tense reaction packs a punch. He clearly wonders who he’s really fighting for and who he’s really fighting against.

It is therefore disappointing that Outside the wire rotates in a predictable twist that cancels out this subversion. Having set up Leo and Harp as contrasting forces – Leo as the robot who can sense Harp as a human who cannot – Håfström does not pursue what the shared experiences could have shaped such different characters. Each was a creation of the US military, but which truly reflects its practices, values ​​or realities? What superiorities do we find in human beings and what gaps? Outside the wire offers these classic genre questions, but doesn’t provide proper answers, and the unsatisfying patility of its ending is a disappointing conclusion for what had the potential to be a much more difficult film.

Outside the wire is streaming on Netflix now.