Netflix’s latest fight movie set in an exotic location, director Mikael Hafstrom’s “Outside the Wire,” features empty-calorie action in a less-than-satisfying Cold War-inspired robotic revolt tale. The film’s redundant titles – several characters repeat the same information later – explain the outbreak of a civil war that unfolds in 2036 in Eastern Europe. US troops, with the help of robotic soldiers called Gumps, serve as peacekeepers against the region’s ruthless criminal warlord Viktor Koval (Pilou Asbaek). Harp (Damson Idris), an impartial drone pilot, is ordered to go to the war zone as punishment after his cold calculation leads to the deaths of two Marines. Teamed up with top secret android Leo (Anthony Mackie) as a senior officer, he embarks on a mission to stop Koval from obtaining nuclear weapons.
Like several films of sensitive robots (“The Terminator”, “Ex Machina”), “Outside the Wire” presents an android metaphor as a slave, except this time with a black actor. While the Gumps are physically and verbally abused by their fellow humans, Leo is also dismissed as “not one of us.” And Harp, a black soldier without the discipline to say “sir” to his superiors, is assigned to what amounts to a robot overseer in Leo. While this metaphor serves as the thematic backbone of Leo and Harp’s mission, Rowan Athale and Rob Yescombe’s incurable storyline leaves the mainstream subject exhausted.
Cinematographer Michael Bonvillain maps the shaky camera style he used on “Cloverfield” – what Roger Ebert at the time called “Queasy-Cam” – on “Outside the Wire” fights for results mind-boggling. The film’s opening siege, for example, depicting a platoon’s battle to retrieve a fallen comrade trapped in crossfire, is spatially uncertain. The grainy blueprints of the skirmish offer little visual information other than its location on a highway. Without viewers knowing where and against whom the soldiers are firing, the on-screen action is rendered indecipherable. Mackie’s eccentric performance – Leo ends each Harp command with an uncomfortable smile – is also baffling. Under the guise of impending global destruction, the film culminates in an overworked finish involving unsurprising betrayal and even more non-dramatic twists and turns. “Outside the Wire” is a futuristic war film that lacks imagination in the present.
Outside the wire
Rated R for extreme violence between robots. Duration: 1 hour 54 minutes. Watch on Netflix.