Outside the Wire review: Netflix’s Android action movie raises big questions

Drones have become such an accepted aspect of modern warfare that, in the past decade or so, almost all major action franchises have used them as a shortcut to raise the stakes. They fell into the hands of several villains in dystopian futures, like Neill Blomkamp’s Chappie and Elysium, in very popular sequels like Furious 7, and in all three Gerard Butler’s films Olympus fell Series. In Hollywood’s imagination, terrorists really love mechanized weaponry.

But in reality, the use of drones – or, in official terminology, “unmanned aerial vehicles” – in the American armed forces has grown exponentially, particularly during President Obama’s term. The principles of killing people while parked at a table on the other side of the world have been reflected in films (from 2015 Eye in the sky) and documentaries (2013’s Unmanned: America’s Drone Wars) The latest film to explore the ethical ramifications of drones, Netflix’s war resource of the future Off the wire, stumbles over his inability to get involved with these ideas, even when he prioritizes them in building the world.

Anthony Mackie’s parallel career trajectories as a member of the military (in The Hurt Locker and as Sam Wilson / Falcon in the Marvel Cinematic Universe) and a science fiction hero (Altered Carbon season 2, Synchronic) finally overlap in Off the wire, Netflix’s latest action movie about the U.S. military. (Follow the steps of 6 underground, Extractionand Triple Frontier before that.) Mackie produced and co-starred in this initially pleasant-paced thriller, which brings together a human and an android to explore the differences between man and machine. But the film quickly loses momentum.

Director Mikael Håfström does not provide Off the wire with any in-depth analysis of Asimov’s three robotics laws here, any shiver as unique as watching Michael Fassbender’s David tinker in his laboratory at Ridley Scott Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, or any unforgettable action scenario like the chase in the Alex Proyas tunnel I steal. The film rescues its monotonous monochrome production design with an agile script by Rob Yescombe and Rowan Athale, who provide a clearly entertaining Mackie with many short phrases and memorable insults. But bigger ideological questions about humanity, artificial intelligence and whether emotional sincerity or analytical skills are more important in saving lives end up being immaterial in a film that is based on an overly familiar plot, rather than delving into the themes it introduces and then abandons. .

Off the wire it takes place in eastern Europe, where a violent civil war has spread and has spread: criminal commander Viktor Koval (Pilou Asbæk) wants to make Ukraine part of Russia and has received support from the Kremlin to undertake his terrorist attacks and recruit others for his cause . Thanks to the involvement of the United States, much of the region has been destroyed and its people are starving. Although the United Nations has departed, the US maintains its presence as a “peacekeeping force”, although in reality this means that the military regularly engages in shootings, battles and attacks, and is aided by drone pilots, who assess situations from afar and decide when to attack.

One of the best is Lieutenant Thomas Harp (Damson Idris), whose priority is to save as many lives as possible. If it means killing other people, so be it. So when two Marines end up dead because Harp broke the chain of command to start a drone attack that saved 38 other Americans, he rationalizes that he made the right choice (“the decision that seemed most correct,” he told a committee of investigation), but his insubordination is not seen with much affection.

As a punishment, Harp is sent to Nathaniel camp in the war zone itself, where his commanding officer, Colonel Eckhart (Michael Kelly) greets him with “You should be in prison”. Harp’s job as a drone pilot requires a certain kind of clinical coldness and a willingness to fulfill difficult choices that can literally mean life or death, but even he is unprepared to know that he was assigned to help Leo (Mackie), a prototype of the US government android means winning hearts and minds – and if that doesn’t work, kill those who still disagree or oppose. Leo has feelings and is capable of empathy, he says to the shocked Harp, but he also has an iridescent torso made of flexible metal, is a computer genius and is incredibly difficult to destroy. The US military developed a new killing machine and gave it a human face.

When the two meet, Leo summons Harp to help him track down and kill Koval, who plans to gain access to the nuclear weapons that Russia has left out of the Cold War; if they don’t stop their planned terrorist attacks on the United States, says Leo, no one can. And yet, despite all the awareness of his mission, the commands he received and the government he is responsible for, Leo is resentful, angry and tired. He is tired of being in this place, of seeing citizens killed in skirmishes between Americans and Ukrainians, and of being forced to seek information about Koval from people trying to make a difference, such as the director of the Sofiya orphanage (Emily Beecham). It’s all starting to wear out for him, so he seeks Harp’s help to help him get out of line – military terminology to attack the enemy. Once Koval is stopped, Leo reasoned, and the civil war is over, the world will be a better place. Will not?

During the first hour or more of your run time, Off the wire it looks much more complex and less patriotic than it really is. Like Leo, Mackie is quick with a sardonic smile and a fierce temper, and his repeated mockery of Harp’s ingenuity with an incredulous “Do you believe that?” it’s as much fun as your offense when Harp fumbles with a word to describe it. The action scenes fall perfectly one after the other, with a scene of chase and explosion in a hospital followed quickly by a hostage crisis in a bank; the double stroke effectively increases tension. And the film at least references the reality of our time by asking whether the American military, with its endless funding, vast resources and moral grandeur, is really worthy of such prestige. When Sofiya points out that many of the orphans she shelters were left without a family because of American offenses, Harp’s morally charged reaction was a blow. He is clearly asking himself who is really fighting and who is really fighting for.

It is disappointing, then, that Off the wire it spins in a predictable turnaround that undoes this subversion. After defining Leo and Harp as contrasting forces – Leo as the robot he can feel; Harp like the human who cannot – Håfström does not pursue what shared experiences could have shaped these different figures. Each of them was a creation of the US Armed Forces, but which one truly reflects their practices, values ​​or realities? What are the superiorities found in human beings and what are their deficiencies? Off the wire proposes these classic questions of the genre, but does not offer adequate answers, and the unsatisfying coldness of its ending is a disappointingly organized conclusion to what had the potential to be a much more challenging film.

Off the wire is streaming on Netflix now.