Outside the wire is Netflix’s original movie starring Anthony Mackie from Marvel’s Avengers and Damson Idris from FX’s Snowfall. It shows the military combat of the not so distant future where soldiers fight alongside AI robots known as GUMPS. Even in the future, war troubles are not so different than they are today and actions bring swift consequences.  We are led by Harp (Idris) a drone pilot who is as cold as he is smart begins the film by disregarding direct orders that kill two soldiers but saves the rest of the squadron. Harp’s superiors remove him from the safety of the drone pilots where he has spent his entire career and send him to the front lines to gain empathy for the soldiers on the ground who he watches over. This is to help him see the results of his actions and become a better drone pilot.

He is sent to Captain Leo (Mackie) who divulges that he requested Harp directly to help him with his mission. At first glance it appears that Leo is as alone as Harp is but that’s only because he’s not a soldier like the rest of the force, he’s a robot just like the GUMPs; albeit more advanced and highly confidential. Most everyone on the base believes Leo is human just like the rest of them. This is when the film really starts and Leo takes it upon himself to track down Victor Koval, (Pilou Asbaek) a man who has his sights on nuclear warheads to point directly at Washington DC.

This film begins as a standard military movie but quickly escalates to espionage with a killer twist. Seeing as the trailer gives away more than it should, there aren’t too many spoilers but there are enough for fair warning. Leo turns out that he requested Harp because he needed a human to override his main functions and therefore give him the advantage to hunt down the nukes by any means necessary. We learn about the war and how it has affected the people on the ground through Sofiya (Emily Beechem) a woman who runs an orphanage for kids displaced from the war. She is quick to point out that there was no need for the orphanage before the Americans got involved. It asks the important question if these peacekeeping missions the Americans run are really creating peace or just more chaos. This question is asked repeatedly and the similarities between the fictional war in the film and the real wars that plague our planet in life are almost strikingly uncomfortable and just like in life, unfortunately never answered.

Leo, now able to act on his own volition has learned a great deal about war, and with this new intelligence, he has trouble working with the Americans.  He finds solace in Sofiya as someone with who he can empathize and believes in her orders. His new plan is no longer to remove the nuclear warheads from Koval but to use them himself. To show America that it cannot bully the world and not expect someone to punch back. Now Leo and Koval have the same goal but Leo makes sure Koval can’t carry out the attack but rather that he has to do it himself.

The film is fast-paced action at breakneck speeds and is very fun to follow. However, the story and the morals are flawed that yes, it does portray America as a bully and has a few things to say on that matter but above all, it is a movie and the bad guy needs to get his come up in. This made it hard to find the hero in the story. Where Harp is the one who stops the attack, it was hard to see it as a win because all the allegations against the military were valid and by the end of the film, all the problems with America never get addressed and the war continues. It was almost as if all the events of the movie just put them all back to where they started. It would have been nice if the UN intervened or peace talks were discussed but that wasn’t what happened. The mission was successful and the nukes were destroyed and Americans were safe, but that was only a happy ending if you’re an American in DC, which the movie never mentioned or showed. Instead, it showed kids in orphanages, people fighting to live in a war-torn country, and armies from all parts of the world ravishing a country. None of these things were solved which gives the audience the realistic ending that troops feel every time they are sent home after fighting.

The realistic nature of the sci-fi film probably left the same bad taste in the mouth as anyone who has been deployed overseas to see their efforts barely make an impact on the situation at large and I think that’s what the creators of Over the Wire wanted to express. It wasn’t a happy ending, it wasn’t a bad ending, it just ended leaving the audience to wonder what the point of everything was.

The acting was sensational as can be expected from Mackie and Idris and the commentary was thought-provoking. The problem only came that the film started to make a statement but stuttered at the end when it realized it might offend some people, mainly those who believe everything the military does is for the greater good. It pulled its punch and could have made a greater statement if it ended with nukes flying at America or better yet, showing that peace could come with proper understanding from both sides.

The plus to this movie is the same as the negatives. Few times in military films do you ever root for the people who occupy the theater of war. They are simply just there and collateral damage to the greater good. However, the thing that Outside the Wire does perfectly and really nails home is that collateral damage is damaging when that outweighs the overall reasoning the war exists in the first place, the heroes can quickly find themselves on the wrong side of history.