Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Outside the Wire’ on Netflix, an AI/Sci-Fi Action Flick Studded with Cliches and Anthony Mackie Quips

Netflix movie Outside the Wire is an Anthony Mackie-produced Anthony Mackie almost-vehicle, “almost” because Anthony Mackie very nearly plays second fiddle to Damson Idris (of FX series Snowfall). You know Mackie as Captain America’s pal Falcon, or possibly as the other guy in The Hurt Locker, or maybe as the season-two-of-Altered Carbon guy, and now we’ll find out if this sci-fi action flick is worthy of his charisma, or is just a diversion before we’re Marveled by him later this year in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

OUTSIDE THE WIRE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The year: 2036. The U.S. military now boosts its forces with robot soldiers called GUMPs, which are kind of like Chappies except bulkier and with far more tolerable Die Antwoord levels. They come in handy when this stupid country is involved in another stupid country’s civil war, in this case, an unnamed stupid country in Eastern Europe. We’re privy to a situation in which a squadron is pinned down, and Air Force Lieutenant Thomas Harp (Idris), remotely operating a drone, makes a tough call. He defies orders and launches a missile, killing two American soldiers, but quite probably saving 38. As punishment, he’s sent to the frontlines so he can experience death firsthand, and also so he can go on a secret mission. Because when a guy doesn’t listen to his superiors and has no experience on the ground, it makes all kinds of sense to give him something vitally important to do.

Turns out Harp was sought out and recruited by Leo (Mackie), a synthetic AI supersoldier who looks exactly like Anthony Mackie, and is so skilled at looking like Anthony Mackie, you’d never think he wasn’t Anthony Mackie, and not everybody knows he’s not Anthony Mackie. He impresses Harp when he takes off his shirt and transforms his sculpted muscle chest into a nifty slab of CGI. How cool of a humanoid robot is Leo? He’s capable of appreciating the aesthetics of listening to vinyl, and his high-end turntable with a really nice tone arm proves it. Leo and Harp have an assignment: Go OUTSIDE THE WIRE — read: beyond the razor-wire fence into dangerous areas; also, drink — and prevent lunatic warlord Victor Koval (Pilou Asbaek) from getting his hands on some nuclear codes, and possibly acquire a new diamond turntable needle.

Next thing you know, Mackiebot’s leading them on their first video-game mission, and Leo’s one-strapping a backpack full of cholera vaccines for women and children through a firefight like a total greenhorn. They worm their way into the warzone, exchanging bullets with bad guys whose marksmanship makes Stormtroopers look like Chris Kyle, commingling with orphanage directors who are also weapons dealers and all that. People get the hell killed out of them, things will go kablooey and there will be much wrangling of BIG IDEAZ about AI ethics, America’s thirst for war and human detachment from violence. But will the world be saved from nuclear holocaust? NO SPOILERS OR THERE WILL BE… TROUBLE.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: RoboCop, Terminator 2, Bright, Extraction, Training Day, Real Steel, the Mission: Impossible movie(s) with scenes in Eastern Europe and/or characters running on rooftops, and Chappie, can’t forget Chappie. Additionally, its peabrained and mundane rummaging around in the AI conceptual attic — CAN SMART ROBOTS, LIKE, YOU KNOW, COMPREHEND THE IDEA OF GOOD AND EVIL? — is like Ex Machina if it was a Happy Madison production.

Performance Worth Watching: I like Mackie! He’s almost always the coolest dude in the room. Outside the Wire doesn’t give him much to do beyond the usual action-movie pose-and-quip/shout-and-toss-a-grenade stuff, though.

Memorable Dialogue: You can just hear Mackie popping these one-liners like bubble gum right now, can’t you:

“Clock my six, gummy bear.”

“Believe what you want, but this — this is the motherf—in’ truth.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: You know how Terminators and other assorted movie ’bot-humans run? With their elbows at rigid 90-degree angles, their hands flattened into the shape of Nike swooshes knifing through the air for maximum aerodynamics and so they look like they’re as fast as 200 or 300 632hp Lamborghinis? Well, director Mikael Hafstrom (Escape Plan, a bunch of other stuff you forgot existed) has Mackiebot run like that, and it’s one of many action-movie shibboleths he leans on in Outside the Wire. Soldiers in battle yell GO GO GO or GO GO GO GO GO or GO GO GO GO GO GO GO; Mackie wallops bad guys like he’s the offspring of Captain America and Bruce Lee during heavily edited, mildly choreographed action sequences; characters participate in logistically absurd standoffs; the villain has more than one opportunity to just flat-out finish the good guy and get on with the nefarious plan but doesn’t; etc.

And the script. Crimony. It’s a bunch of worn-down pennies that need to be taken out of circulation. Idris uses the phrase “with all due respect” as if he gets a bonus for each repetition. He and Mackie volley cliches like they’re Borg and McEnroe: “War is ugly.” “Time to get dirty.” “Welcome to the war, kid.” “I f—ed up sir. Let me do the right thing.” “You think outside the box.” Someone needs to put this stuff back inside the box and mail it straight to Hell.

I know. I sound angry. I’m really not. I’m shrugging emphatically at a movie that feels like something Will Smith passed on and was cribbed out of spare parts from two dozen other movies. The direction is perfectly OK, Idris and Mackie are game, there’s a little meat on its conceptual bones and it’s quick of pace, doling out action sequences at well-timed intervals. It’s not boring, but neither is it particularly good. It’s a collection of violent scenes strung together with all the usual tropes and enough bellowed F-bombs to make your mom come in the room and make you switch to something that’s PG-13. With all due respect, this movie kinda sucks.

Our Call: SKIP IT. I’m all for a rip-roaring sci-fi extravaganza, but Outside the Wire is not one of those things.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Outside the Wire on Netflix