Review: Familiar Circuitry in Netflix's OUTSIDE THE WIRE with Anthony Mackie
As one of Netflix’s first big movies this year, Outside The Wire tries to be a philosophical and mind-blowing sci-fi film with lots of action, some name actors, and cool concepts. However, most of these attempts land nowhere terribly interesting and have virtually nothing important to say. With Anthony Mackie and a pretty great list of other supporting actors, we see a lot of effort being put into production and the acting team, but no amount of skill and work can override a simple sci-fi story.
Outside the Wire takes the audience into a future not too far ahead of us (2036), and yet the technology is unbelievably far away. It just doesn’t logically make sense to have military robots and more advanced things only 15 years away. It’s frustrating to see this unfathomable technology casually thrown into the mix and feels more like fantasy. Since we're talking about the illogical choices in the movie, let’s also address the odd military action in the movie. I understand that in war things get hectic and people have to go outside of the rules, but again, the script and the story is called for so many rule breakers and unorthodox or illegal or unbelievable things that it’s hard to justify and believe that anyone would do these things.
Anthony Mackie does a fine job as usual, but this character does feel a bit too much like his character from Altered Carbon, Kovacs. His mannerisms, cold attitude, and inherent ability to beat the tar out of everybody with ease makes him feel like the most generic sci-fi hero ever. This isn’t Mackie’s fault, he’s working well and having fun with the part, but the overall character and performance feels very manufactured. Damson Idris plays his role well as the American soldier trying to do what is right, but his character suffers from emotional and illogical writing (like most of the characters in the story).
The last thing to address here is the special effects. For the most part, things look pretty good and when the movie is paused, things look really great actually. However, as soon as there is movement of the characters, it is easy to tell that it is CG and makes the robot on robot action seem even less impactful and pointless than it is. The team working on the effects did all they could do, I’m sure of that. It is just unfortunate that it seems like the job was rushed and they couldn’t finish and polish everything.
This isn’t a bad movie, and there’s plenty to enjoy for fans of sci-fi and military movies. Mackie and Damson have good dynamics, and the robots make for some fine action. But the movie as a whole and the general story, science, and character choices seem so far-fetched that it accumulates to a mostly mediocre and familiar sci-fi film.
