VERY INTERESTING ALPHA ALPHA: OUTSIDE THE WIRE

 Hello ladies and gents yes im talking about it happy?

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.

And as always have a chilled day from the Viking