Outside the Wire is a serviceable enough action/war movie that, in between firefights, wants to say something about war. Whether it accomplishes that in its overly long runtime is debatable.

Set in the near future, America is running peacekeeper operations (with the help of advanced robot soldiers) in a civil war ravaged Ukraine. An ex-drone-pilot is sent on a boots-on-the-ground undercover mission with mysterious commanding officer. They are to deliver vaccines to the locals… and to track down an insurgent trying to steal Soviet-era nukes. Anthony Mackie plays the experienced spy and he has his own set of (sci-fi) secrets.

I suppose the movie doesn’t really do anything terribly wrong. It’s serviceable and moderately entertaining and has a couple twists and turns that may or may not surprise. It’s also pretty forgettable. The action scenes are decent enough and the CGI robot soldiers look pretty good. I’d say its biggest sin is just going on for entirely too many minutes.

I guess the movie is most noticeable for being a shrug. Something I’m not too surprised Netflix either produced or picked up and something I’ll forget in a couple days. They need to do better and they have done better with similar material (thinking of Extraction with another Avenger). Outside the Wire has ambitions that exceed its skill as a produced film, I’ll give it that much at least.

Score: 73