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Date: 2/15/2021
What I’m watching: an engaging science fiction film.
On Netflix: Outside the Wire
We’ve been intrigued with robots and androids for a very, very long time. The concept of animated living statues of stone or metal dates back to the Third Century BCE.
Once the 20th century arrived with its new technology the speculation about a mechanical person seemed to have an even higher profile in popular culture.
In 1920 the Czech writer Karel Capek wrote his successful play “R.U.R,” which told the story of a group of human-looking robots who rebel against their human masters.
Fritz Lang’s classic film “Metropolis” (1926) featured a beautiful but immoral robot who looked like the film’s heroine.
Pulp magazines featured robots in stories and robots turned up in movies and serials in the 1930s.
Author Isaac Asimov famously wrote about robots with his novel “I, Robot,” and developed rules by which the robots in his stories would behave.
They are, “First Law: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. Second Law: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.”
Asimov’s work has been highly influential in how people present robots in fiction.
Knowing that robots have been part of popular culture for centuries means the field is crowded with stories and films featuring them as characters. The challenge for any writer now is to come up with a way to see robots in a different light.
“Outside the Wire” attempts to do just that and I believe is successful in presenting a story with a new perspective and several major twist and turns.
The year is 2036 and American troops are in Ukraine as part of a peace-keeping force to try to prevent a warlord from taking over the region and inciting a civil war.
The American forces combine robotic soldiers with drones and ground troops and one of the drone pilots is sent to the warzone as a punishment after he disobeys a command that results in the death of two Marines.
Lt. Harp (Damson Idris) is assigned to Capt. Leo (Anthony Mackie) a seemingly unorthodox officer. What Harp discovers is that Leo is actually an android, the first in what could be a series of artificial human beings who could be used in the place of human soldiers.
The robotic soldiers the military already uses has certain limitations, but Leo is very, very different.
Leo’s mission on the surface is to bring vaccine to a refugee camp, but he has another motive. He wants to find and prevent the warlord from having the codes to a largely abandoned Russian nuclear missile facility.
It is here the film takes a very hard turn, which is followed by another hard turn. No spoilers from me, but the script does supply some welcomed surprises.
I don’t think Mackie gets the attention he deserves. He is an appealing performer and he does a solid job with Leo. Idris nails the drone pilot now thrust in the middle of a war, something to which he is certainly unaccustomed.
Production standards are solid. The film looks good and director Mikael Hafstrom keeps the action flowing.
"Outside the Wire” provides a good two-hour diversion.