Mark Reviews Movies: OUTSIDE THE WIRE

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 14, 2021

The filmmakers clearly want Outside the Wire to have brains to match the movie's action-heavy brawn. They try, for sure, giving us direct questions about the philosophy of artificial intelligence, the nature of humanity, and big moral questions about the costs of both war and how to stop it. Screenwriters Rowan Athale and Rob Yescombe don't have much patience for exploring any of these questions, but they do try to present them.

That's something. It simply isn't enough, though, to add any notable depth to this story, which turns out mostly to be about action and spectacle.

It's the year 2036, and a civil war has erupted in Ukraine. The politics of this conflict aren't too important—something to do with Russia trying to expand its territory. It's best just to know that there's an evil villain with a goal of obtaining Cold War-era nuclear missiles to wreak mass destruction. Yes, the plot really is that rudimentary.

The United States military is serving as a "peacekeeping" force in the region, although that essentially amounts to a lot of shooting and bombing. Back in Nevada, Lieutenant Thomas Harp (Damson Idris) is a drone pilot, overseeing one particular mission over in Eastern Europe. When the squad he's monitoring comes under attack, Harp has a choice to make: Fire a missile on an armored truck, near two wounded Marines and preparing to unleash some deadly robotic soldiers, or wait for the commanding officer to try to stage a rescue. He selects the former, with an impersonal calculation: the lives of two men for the surviving 38.

With this choice and the existence of robot soldiers, the movie pretty quickly establishes the idea of how technology can remove the human element and human considerations of war. Harp's punishment is to be sent to Ukraine and be placed under the command of Captain Leo (Anthony Mackie, channeling equal levels of coldness and charisma), where he'll hopefully learn that there's a human cost to his decisions as a drone pilot.

It's a fairly solid, potentially thoughtful premise, complicated by the fact that Leo isn't just some tough commander with some generically unconventional methods. He's actually not even human. Leo is an advanced android, capable of appearing, behaving, and thinking in a most human way. What does that mean, in terms of the "thinking" part? Well, that's the central question here: Do humans act based on emotion, calculation, or some other mindset?

While Harp and Leo go on their mission, trying to find and stop the militia leader Victor Koval (Pilou Asbæk) from obtaining and using those nuclear weapons, the two will occasionally put forth that question in pretty clear terms. Leo is of the opinion that emotions are the key to humanity. That's how he has been programmed, at least. Harp, the man who killed two allies based on some basic math, would seem to be the counterpoint to Leo's thinking. That could have made an intriguing dynamic, but the filmmakers really do just stop at the asking of the question.

This is primarily a plot about a lengthy chase, as Leo and Harp make their way across the country to various points of interest (a refugee camp, an orphanage, and a bank under siege), interrupted by assorted action sequences (A sniper tries to kill Leo, and that bank assault becomes a chaotic frenzy of running, fighting, and shooting among human and robotic foes). The action pauses occasionally for Harp and Leo to debate some decision (What should be done with that sniper?), for Harp to learn from a local resistance leader (played by Emily Beecham) that most of the casualties of this conflict have come from drone strikes, and for the young lieutenant to feel the heat and see the price of such a strike from the ground.

The movie, then, isn't without its intellectual arguments and moral considerations. There are some real ideas here, as simple as they may be—and as contradictory and incomplete as they eventually become. Most of them primarily end up serving the plot, which ultimately has little to do with the fanatical Koval.

The real point is about Leo's nature—either as a servant of the military, apparently trying to stop this conflict, or as his own mind, seeing a bigger picture about conflict in general, which can never be resolved without some overly dramatic gesture. There are a few good questions raised by the character's eventual turn, but the screenwriters mainly see it as a rationale for another chase and some more shooting, set against a blandly industrial backdrop and featuring that worn-out cliché of a digital timer ticking toward an apocalypse.

Director Mikael Håfström is definitely operating with action in mind, and there's a competence to the way these sequences are staged and incorporate decent-enough visual effects. Outside the Wire, though, repeatedly suggests it has more important, more philosophical, and more complicated things on its mind. It does, in a way, but only so far as those ideas can keep plot moving.

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