Review: Military Sci-Fi Actioner 'Outside the Wire' Thinks Outside the Box

It's man in partnership with machine – and man versus machine, too – when Anthony Mackie and Damson Idris team up in the Ukraine, and in the year 2032, to prevent a warlord from unleashing nuclear annihilation in Netflix's Mikael H�fstr�m-directed actioner "Outside the Wire."

Mackey ("The Avengers" movies, "Synchronic") plays Leo, a one-of-his-kind android prototype who you wouldn't know was an artificial life form if he didn't sometimes voluntarily turn his skin transparent, displaying the hi-tech electronics beneath. Leo has wit, humor, smarts, and volition – and he curses a blue streak as a matter of course.

Idris ("The Twilight Zone," "Black Mirror") plays Harp, a drone pilot whose cold-blooded calculations cost American Marines their lives in a heated engagement, but whose numbers-based and dispassionate world view also saved 38 other men. Harp's reluctance to operate from emotion rubs others the wrong way, which might explain why his punishment for disobeying orders (even though his actions saved lives) is to be exiled from his cozy control room, send into the Ukrainian conflict zone, where a brutal civil war rages, and put under Leo's direct command.

What makes a man human? When does a machine achieve personhood? Those are questions that the movies have asked for almost as long as there have been movies, with films like "Metropolis" and "Blade Runner." "Outside the Wire" doesn't dwell on the ethics or philosophizing overmuch, preferring to keep the action swift. On his first day seeing in-person combat situations, Harp helps Leo with a humanitarian mission that's also a cover for a meeting with an informant who can point them in the direction of a hidden vault where Russian nuclear codes left over from the Cold War reside. The top-secret mission: Retrieve the codes before Russian loyalist Viktor Koval (Pilou Asb�k) can get hold of them and turn a secret Russian ICBM site into his personal arsenal.

When the philosophical questions do come up, they help drive the plot. Can Leo override his ethics programming? Yes – in certain situations. Is he, despite his rank, the subordinate of Harp? Maybe (in a certain Hegelian sense, if you really want to bore down into the philosophical underpinnings). Does he have his own agenda? It starts to look that way as the movie unfolds, with firefights, explosions, and opposing armies of "gumps" (less elegant and more brute-force robotic combat troops) shooting at each other, as well as at human soldiers and insurgents.

But what, exactly, is Leo up to? How can a machine lie and manipulate? And, as brisk and efficient as Leo might be in hand-to-hand situations, can he possibly be programmed to outsmart his human colleagues with as much intellectual adeptness and emotional intuition as he displays in superhuman feats of skill and strength?

Mackey's role isn't written in the same way as many android characters. He's not the cool, helpful presence of a Bishop (Lance Henriksen) from "Aliens," nor the lethal and soulless killer of Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator. He's certainly not sweet and naive like Commander Data (Brent Spiner) from "Star Trek." If anything, he's got the spark of personable mischief that Michael Ealy brought to the role of the synthetic police officer Dorian in Fox's short-lived 2013 series "Almost Human," if not the smooth charm. (He is, after all, a military man, albeit an artificial one; and, as he barks at Harp at one point, "I respond the asshole standing in front of me" when it comes to his personality's finer points.)

The film's twisty, layered plot almost ventures into buddy movie territory, but never quite; it's intriguingly determined to steer away from, or at least minimize, cliches, which makes the sudden embrace of cliche late in the film a puzzling distraction. Was this the result of some studio suit's Post-It note being jammed into the original screenplay, a tart, stout piece of work by Rowan Athale and Rob Yescombe?

Though it's military sci-fi, "Outside the Wire" often doesn't feel like it, and that's for the same reason that its influences (films like Alfonso Cuaron's "Children of Men," which seems to inform some of the action sequences here) often felt less like sci-fi than whatever secondary genre they also happened to be. It's a successful mix, given a decent budget and plenty of serviceable, suitably gritty, visual effects. Where the film feels unaccountably dull is in characterizations that, while forceful and well-tooled, could have used a sharper edge (and, as mentioned, in the oddly incongruous ending). But does it matter when so many pyrotechnics are going off? Mackey and Idris make the film their own, shaping their performances to match it's ever-shifting, always-surprising contours.

With some of the other sci-fi offerings on the streamer feeling cheaply made (few cast members, claustrophobic settings), "Outside the Wire," with its relatively high production values and talented cast, feels like something refreshingly outside the box.

"Outside the Wire" streams on Netflix starting January 15.