'Outside The Wire' Trailer: Android Anthony Mackie Goes To War

Android Anthony Mackie is ready to kick some ass in the latest trailer for Outside the Wire. The Netflix action flick is set in the future (naturally) and follows a drone pilot (Damson Idris) who teams up with Mackie's android soldier to help locate a doomsday device. Because that's pretty much how action movies work now – characters have to find some sort of destructive device, and usually, that device has some sort of beam of blue light shooting out of the sky. You know the drill. Watch the Outside the Wire trailer below.

I'll be honest with you, friends: I'm burned-out on Netflix action movies. I like a mid-budget, predictable action movie as much as the next person – there's a whole slew of them from the '90s that rock – but so far, Netflix's action films have been rather uninspired. I'm talking about stuff like Extraction and The Old Guard – movies that should be entertaining but aren't. Which makes me apprehensive about Outside the Wire, the latest bit of explosion-filled hokum from the streaming giant.

In Outside the Wire, the year is 2036, and "America serves as a peacekeeping force and human troops on both sides are supported by robot combatants called Gumps and drone pilots monitoring skirmishes from thousands of miles away." Yes, you read that right, the robots are called GUMPS. Anyway, "after headstrong drone pilot Lieutenant Harp (Damson Idris) disobeys a direct order to intervene in a conflict, the Army deploys him to a military outpost to confront the human costs of his button-pushing. Harp's expectations of guarding a fence are upended when his new commanding officer Captain Leo (Anthony Mackie) announces plans to infiltrate the demilitarized zone and apprehend Viktor Koval (Pilou Asbæk), a warlord who intends to launch a network of dormant nuclear weapons. Soon, Harp learns that his theoretical experience as a drone pilot means little out on the battlefield under enemy attack — especially after discovering that Leo is an A.I.-enhanced supersoldier whose strength, speed, and demand for results promise to turn his real-world education into a trial by fire."

Props to that synopsis for burying the lede there – "Oh, and by the way, did we mention that Leo is a fucking robot?" Wild! The cast features Anthony Mackie a Leo, Damson Idris as Harp, Enzo Cilenti as Miller, Emily Beecham as Sofiya, Michael Kelly as Eckhart, and Pilou Asbæk as Victor Koval. Mikael Håfström, director of 1408, helms the pic.

Look for Outside the Wire on Netflix January 15, 2021.