Movie Review - Outside the Wire (2021)

It's a war picture that's trying to condemn the idea of war. It's ironic because the co-writer is Rob Yescombe whose credits mainly include those for video games, video games that are first-person shooter and that revel in war violence. Of course, this wouldn't be the first film to indulge in the very thing of which it's supposed to be criticizing. A lot of action films do that. Because of Yescombe's involvement, it's also not surprising why this film feels like a video game at a certain point. It wouldn't have been so bad, if it hadn't gone down the hackneyed and rather cliché road of a killer robot trying to destroy the world.

Anthony Mackie (Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Detroit) stars as Leo, a captain in the U.S. Marines in the year 2036. He's stationed in the Ukraine, as a civil war has broken out in that part of eastern Europe. It's revealed that Leo is an android, a robot that looks perfectly human but none of the other soldiers know he's an android. It's not as if the soldiers aren't aware of robots. Robots that look like the mecha robots that have become represented in various media are called "gumps" here. Gumps are robotic soldiers that assist American and Russian armies to fight. However, it's not sure why Leo is the only one of his kind or if he is the only one. It's also not clear as to what Leo's grander purpose is, which couldn't be accomplished by other military or intelligence officers.

Damson Idris (Black Mirror and Snowfall) co-stars as Thomas Harp, a first lieutenant presumably in the U.S. Air Force who is stationed at Creech Air Force Base, which is just north of Las Vegas, Nevada. He serves as one of the operators of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or UAV, commonly called drones. When the film begins, Idris' character is put into the same position as Aaron Paul's character in the film Eye in the Sky (2016). It seems like it's going to be an examination of the Trolley Problem in that 2016 film.

Yet, it moves away from that dramatic dilemma and becomes more of a buddy cop flick where Harp and Leo pair up and have occasional witty banter, at least in the first half. It feels like it could become akin to 48 Hrs. (1982) and Lethal Weapon (1987) but set in a war zone. The humor and charm of someone like Mackie works in that regard, but the dreary and cold look of the film eventually overrides that humor and takes over. It then rather devolves into a killer robot story, which is a shame becomes Mackie was in a killer robot film, not that like ago. He appeared in the film Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). Even though that 2015 film wasn't that great, it was more entertaining than this. The villain was more interesting than the villain here.

Rated R for strong violence and language.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 54 mins.

Available on Netflix.