Movie Breakdown: Outside The Wire (Noah)

Pre-Screening Stance:

A Netflix sci-fi action flick dropped into January with nary a whisper of its release? I have very low hopes for this one.

Post-Screening Ramble:

If you’ve ever been watching Training Day and thought to yourself, “Man, I wish this film was set in the future and instead of cops it involved robots” – well, this one is for you. In 2037, a civil war has erupted in Europe and America’s new robot-supported army is knee deep in perpetual combat. For reasons never explained, expert drone pilot, Lt. Thomas Harp (Damson Idris) defies the orders of his superiors and fires a missile that kills two Marines. As punishment he’s sent from the relative piece of a military base in Nevada to the front where’s he’s paired with a no-bullshit, get-it-done-no-matter-what soldier, Captain Leo (Anthony Mackie). Oh, and Captain Leo is also a new form of super crazy robot who can do just about anything. After a mission to deliver vaccines, ahem, “outside the wire” goes belly-up, the amoral robot soldier and the fresh-faced rookie have to, well, do things to stop something from happening. The whole of the movie is a tangled web of allegiance switches and murky reasoning centered on nuclear bombs, Ukranian terrorists and Harp learning the ethics of combat, smashed together with – even for Netflix – iffy computer graphics and a particularly stone-faced performance from Mackie. For every twenty minute stretch of Mackie running and shooting and then running some more, there’s a six minute cool off period where Captain Leo acts sassy and talks shit while he tries to impart some wisdom to his erstwhile companion. It’s the type of film where shitty plot development is written off as murky ethical choices, when really, it’s just a confusing mess with the occasional bright spot of robot-on-robot gun fighting.

One Last Thought:

My overall opinion on this film is a picture of me “shrugging,” so, let’s just say I don’t have another thought to spare on it.