“Outside the Wire,” a new futuristic Netflix movie starring Anthony Mackie, is a run-of-the-mill action flick with more bullets than ideas.
Set in 2036, as “Outside the Wire” begins there is a violent civil war in Eastern Europe. The United States are there as peacekeepers, using robotic soldiers called Gumps to battle a ruthless warlord called Viktor Koval (Pilou Asbæk), the Terror of the Balkans, who may possess a doomsday device. In the midst of this conflict is Lieutenant Thomas Harp (Damson Idris), an U.S.-based drone pilot who makes the difficult, long-distance decision to sacrifice two Marine lives to save thirty-eight others. Instead of being commended for saving lives, an ethics committee sends him to a demilitarized zone in Eastern Europe to experience real combat up-close-and-personal.
He’s assigned to work with Captain Leo (Mackie), a hardnosed veteran who’ll show him the ropes. “War is ugly,” Leo says. “Sometimes you gotta get dirty to see any real change.” The twist is that Leo is only five years old. And no, before you ask, this isn’t a militaristic riff on “The Boss Baby.” Leo is a biotech android, a one-man militia, designed to be smarter, faster and more efficient than everyone else. “My existence is classified,” he tells Harp as they head off on a mission to deliver a vaccine to a cholera break twenty clicks outside the wire. The operation is partly humanitarian, and partly to act as a cover to meet an informant with intel on Koval’s whereabouts.
“Outside the Wire” is a slick mish-mash of “iRobot,” “Chappie” by way of “The Terminator” and modern war movies like “The Kingdom.” The derivative story is a delivery system for a series of clichés, large scale battle scenes and nifty special effects.
The social commentary on the ethics of using drones during wartime and what constitutes acceptable collateral damage feels blunted by the movie’s propensity to blow away soldiers and civilians alike with what must be the highest body count in a movie so far this year. It’s an important and ongoing discussion in the real world but don’t look for answers here, just giant fireballs and the rat-a-tat-tat of automatic weapons.
When the bodies aren’t dropping, the clichés are. It’s as if Leo’s speech functions were programmed by a bot who had watched a 1000 hours of 1940s war movies. He does, however, occasionally deliver a fun line. “I’m not an idiot,” says the “Falcon and the Winter Soldier” star. “That would make me human.”
“Outside the Wire” is a noisy time-waster that could have used some outside the box thinking to make its shop-worn story more effective.
Richard sits in on “The Morning Rush with Bill Carroll” on Ottawa’s CFRA to talk about the ambitious Netflix plan to release 70 movies to the streaming service this year.
On the September 06, 2020 edition of the Richard Crouse Show we meet we meet Iain Reid the Canadian author of the bestselling novel “I’m Thinking of Ending Things.”
“I’m Thinking of Ending Things” has been described as a psychological thriller and horror fiction, and is about a young man who takes his girlfriend to see his parents on a remote farm and the disturbing aftermath that follows. It sounds simple, but this is anything but. It’s a story of predetermination and free will that bears up to reading and rereading.
It’s now also a Netflix film, directed by Charlie Kaufman, starring stars Jessie Buckley, Jesse Plemons and Toni Collette.
Then, Richard welcomes four very special guests, “Midsommar” director Ari Aster and star Jack Reynor.
Each week on the nationally syndicated Richard Crouse Show, Canada’s most recognized movie critic brings together some of the most interesting and opinionated people from the movies, television and music to put a fresh spin on news from the world of lifestyle and pop-culture. Tune into this show to hear in-depth interviews with actors and directors, to find out what’s going on behind the scenes of your favourite shows and movies and get a new take on current trends. Recent guests include Ethan Hawke, director Brad Bird, comedian Gilbert Gottfried, Eric Roberts, Brian Henson, Jonathan Goldsmith a.k.a. “The most interesting man in the world,” and best selling author Linwood Barclay.
Click HERE to catch up on shows you might have missed!
Check out episode thirty-three of Richard’s web series, “In Isolation With…” It’s the talk show where we make a connection without actually making contact! Today, broadcasting directly from Isolation Studios (a.k.a. my home office) we meet Iain Reid the Canadian author of the bestselling novel “I’m Thinking of Ending Things.”
“I’m Thinking of Ending Things” has been described as a psychological thriller and horror fiction, and is about a young man who takes his girlfriend to see his parents on a remote farm and the disturbing aftermath that follows. It sounds simple, but this is anything but. It’s a story of predetermination and free will that bears up to reading and rereading.
It’s now also a Netflix film, directed by Charlie Kaufman, starring stars Jessie Buckley, Jesse Plemons and Toni Collette.
I started the interview by congratulating him on his recent success…
Watch the interview on YouTube HERE or on ctvnews.ca HERE!
“I’m a good boy from a good family,” says Agu (Abraham Attah), the preteen protagonist of the drama “Beasts of No Nation.” His father is a teacher, his mother a churchgoing woman. Big brother is a muscle-head teen with a crush on local girl.
As civil war comes to his village (in an unnamed African country), summary executions become common and soon Agu is left alone and on a run for his life. He finds a new family as a child soldier under a rebel Commandant (Idris Elba). “A boy is very, very dangerous,” he says. “He has two eyes to see, two hands to strangle and fingers to pull a trigger. Leave this in my charge. I will be training him to be a warrior.”
The Commandant is charismatic leader, a master of indoctrination and brainwashing who weaves a protective web around the young boy, creating a family unit for the boy as he turns him into a killer. Agu is convinced the very real war is personal; it’s a battle against the people who killed his father. He ‘s taught the art of cruelty, how to hack a man to death with a machete and kill people by inserting grenades into their mouths.
The trip into the heart of darkness is sidelined by the Commandant’s own journey into Colonel Kurtz territory. Disillusioned, Agu begins to understand “the only reason we are fighting anymore is to be dying.”
“Beasts of No Nation” is a harrowing experience. It’s not the kind of movie you leave the theatre saying, “I really enjoyed that.” Instead, it’s an experience, an unforgiving film that begins by allowing us to get to know Agu’s family before tragedy strikes, then torments us with the terrifying sound of gunfire heard from inside a hiding place before showing us Agu’s descent into a hellish kind of survival. It’s ruthless and brutal, perhaps best summed up in the plainspoken words of the boy himself. “I saw terrible things and I did terrible things.” Be prepared, he may be a lot of things, but he’s not a liar.
A year ago, Edmonton-born actress Olivia Cheng says she was familiar with Marco Polo as an Italian traveller “and I obviously knew about the swimming pool game, but that is about it.”
Now, as the star of the new Netflix adventure series about Polo’s early years, she’s captivated by the story.
“When I saw the first script I said, ‘Where’s the second script? Then the third, fourth, fifth…’”
The handsome 10-episode season follows Polo’s travels on the Silk Road to the court of Mongolian emperor Kublai Kahn.
It’s a study of political skulduggery, greed and sexual politics, 13th-century style.
Imagine Game of Thrones with martial arts and an international cast headed by Rick The Fast and the Furious Yune and Joan Chen and you get the idea.
“All of my stuff was shot in studio in Malaysia,” says Cheng, who spent five months on location.
“I’ve never had an opportunity to immerse myself so fully in a role and be able to focus like that. You’re almost in a cocoon or a bubble, where you are constantly thinking about the story, constantly thinking about the nuances. I would often walk from set to set watching different scenes. I just got to immerse myself in the world of Marco Polo and experience a cultural adventure that I’m really grateful for.”
The actress, who also plays Linda Park on Arrow and The Flash, says the show’s elaborately tailored wardrobe helped her find the character of Mei Lin, a royal concubine and martial arts expert.
“When you have the beautiful costumes, you are able to step into a world and suddenly it informs you,” she says.
“That is a huge gift as an actor because a costume can make you move a certain way; you are in your body in a certain way because of the weight of the material. For me, I felt like it made me so much more graceful. You have to be, in order not to trip in those costumes.”
But just as interesting as watching the world of Marco Polo being built was a scene where she tries to pull it all apart.
“I can’t tell you how amazing it was to get to film White Moon — this epic fight scene with 200 extras all dressed in white,” she says.
“I felt so grateful because I saw all the effort it took to create this world for me to run in and try and destroy it.”
“Outside the Wire,” a new futuristic Netflix movie starring Anthony Mackie, is a run-of-the-mill action flick with more bullets than ideas.
