Outside the Wire (2021)
Directed by Mikael Håfström
In the near future, a drone pilot is sent into a deadly militarized zone and must work with an android officer to locate a doomsday device.
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6 films that influenced Outside the Wire
What critics say influenced Outside the Wire
As Harp begins to understand that there is an extra-jurisdictional way that Leo is able to operate, one is reminded of the back-and-forth between Ethan Hawke and Denzel Washington in Training Day – though this film goes in much wilder directions.
Everything about him is a secret, and as the men head off on a vaccine-delivery mission that is really cover for a meeting with a spy, Leo's impatience with his hesitant underling may recall the dynamic between Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke in Training Day .
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: RoboCop , Terminator 2 , Bright , Extraction , Training Day , Real Steel , the Mission: Impossible movie(s) with scenes in Eastern Europe and/or characters running on rooftops, and Chappie , can’t forget Chappie .
What this amounts to, really, is a few longwinded and artlessly-written conversations in the car between firefights – those are reminiscent of Training Day , even if the subject is plucked straight from Eye in the Sky .
He gets along well with Idris, in a similar way as Denzel Washington did Ethan Hawke in Training Day.
Have you ever watched “Training Day” and wondered how cool it would be if, 15 minutes into the movie, Denzel Washington took off his shirt to reveal that he was actually a semi-translucent android super-soldier with the strength of a Terminator and the emotional range of a B-team Avenger?
In concept, Outside the Wire borrows a great deal from its influences: it’s a modern military thriller of the Black Hawk Down mold, which screenwriters Rowan Athale and Rob Yescombe augment with iconography from Children of Men , District 9 , and Ex Machina .
But as video game-y as its cutscene-like lore dumps might feel, Outside the Wire is more often a low-energy hodgepodge of prior movies from the genre, particularly Terminator 2 – from which at least three separate scenes are blatantly borrowed – District 9, and Chappie.
Cheaply shot, poorly acted, and with a plot that strip-mines everything from RoboCop to District 9 to Eye in the Sky to even the beyond-dumb jet-fighter-goes-rogue movie Stealth, Hafstrom’s feature might be fine background noise to fold your laundry to.
You’ve got Terminator and the fear of technology run wild, District 9 and a robot class separate from that of humans, and even a little bit of Good Kill, and the problem of collateral damage caused by drone fighter pilots who’ve never seen real combat.
In concept, Outside the Wire borrows a great deal from its influences: it’s a modern military thriller of the Black Hawk Down mold, which screenwriters Rowan Athale and Rob Yescombe augment with iconography from Children of Men , District 9 , and Ex Machina .
Additionally, its peabrained and mundane rummaging around in the AI conceptual attic — CAN SMART ROBOTS, LIKE, YOU KNOW, COMPREHEND THE IDEA OF GOOD AND EVIL? — is like Ex Machina if it was a Happy Madison production.
It’s an interesting issue that provides some spice to the otherwise relentless action, but this is no deep-dish movie about artificial intelligence like “Ex Machina.”
In concept, Outside the Wire borrows a great deal from its influences: it’s a modern military thriller of the Black Hawk Down mold, which screenwriters Rowan Athale and Rob Yescombe augment with iconography from Children of Men , District 9 , and Ex Machina .
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Director Mikael Håfström, best known for the Schwarzenegger/Stallone 2013 actioner “Escape Plan” missed the chance to add a final tag towards the beginning that viewers expecting something akin to “Escape Plan” are in for much of the same— subpar action mixed with a wealth of missteps.
The film’s paradoxical obsession with preserving the humanity of warfare is compelling enough to keep things moving even when everything around it feels bland and gray, and the po-faced goofiness of the whole endeavor — emboldened by Mikael Håfström’s (“Escape Plan”) resourceful direction — is consistent in a way that makes you want to focus on the movie’s pulpy extrapolation of Asimovian concepts instead of how it beats them into the ground.
After spending years standing alongside a super-soldier as Falcon in a bunch of Marvel movies, it seems like Anthony Mackie wanted to play one himself in Outside the Wire, the latest from director Mikael Håfström (1408, Escape Plan).
Anthony Mackie is the computer who wore combat gear in Outside the Wire , the latest offering from Swedish helmer Mikael Hafstrom, making his first return to Hollywood filmmaking since kicking off an accidental franchise with 2013’s Escape Plan .
Anthony Mackie's action man chops are given a robust work-out in this sci-fi combat film, set in 2036 and directed by Sweden's Mikael Håfström ( Escape Plan , The Rite ).
The latest from Mikael Håfström, director of such ambition-free fare as 1408 and Escape Plan , is likewise content with merely delivering a few thrills, and fails to provide a narrative framework to support these fleeting moments of excitement.
Occasionally those movies were all kinds of ridiculous, over-the-top fun, like The Boondock Saints .