Fantastic action : "Outside the Wire"

As you probably already read on our website, Outside the Wire was the first Netflix original film to be released immediately with Ukrainian dubbing and subtitles . Great news ... that's just, I'm afraid, this is the picture's merits.

First, a few words about the name. Death Zone is not an official translation of Netflix, the streaming service does not translate the titles of its films in most cases. This is an amateur activity of news and film sites, and in different countries of the world. Similarly, the film is called in Chinese, Arabic, etc.

The point is that the name Outside the Wire is very difficult to translate adequately. Here is a play on words, Think outside the box - "Think outside the box", and a hint that the robot's behavior is programmed by its structure (once the programming of large computers was carried out by switching the necessary registers using ordinary wires), and the fact that the robot came out of - under control, got out of the network access zone. Etc. So the Death Zone is just the lesser evil here.

So, 2036, Ukraine. Pro-Russian terrorists detonated a dirty nuclear bomb in the center of Kiev; the country's government no longer exists. Almost all of the Left Bank has been captured by Russian-backed militants led by the notorious Viktor Koval. The Ukrainians, according to the old tradition, organize the Resistance. The United States sends a peacekeeping contingent to the country, but they practically do not go beyond the boundaries of the guarded perimeter and cannot cope with the pro-Russian forces. In hostilities, the United States, together with the Marines, uses drones and military robots of various types; militants find Russian-made robotic soldiers in mines.

In a similar situation, one of the pilots, controlling a drone from the territory of the United States, violates a direct order and, trying to save a platoon of marines, destroys several American soldiers along with the terrorists. Associated losses. As punishment, he is sent to Ukraine under the command of the mysterious Captain Leo, whose mission is to find and destroy the mothballed nuclear missile silos, which, it turns out, still remain on the territory of our country and may fall into the hands of militants. Here, however, Captain Leo is not quite human, or rather, not at all human. Captain Leo is a new generation android fighting robot that looks like a human, can feel, understand humor and is able to make independent decisions.

Anthony Mackie (Sokol in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Takeshi Kovacs in the second season of the series Altered Carbon) starred as cyborg Captain Leo in Outside the Wire, and he is also one of the producers of the film. The director's chair was taken by the Swede Mikael Hofström, who was committed to shooting action films and horror films of average quality in Hollywood. Hofström's most highly regarded film is Evil (2003), which was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

Actually, one of the main problems of Outside the Wire is poor direction. Most of the scenes are completely flat and formulaic, the action sequences are uninventive and boring, the dialogues are completely predictable. And for the fact that the scriptwriters are putting into the mouths of the fighters of the Ukrainian Resistance theses that sound today from Russian propaganda mouthpieces, the film should be banned from showing on the territory of Ukraine.

In general, with the ideas that the authors tried to put into this film, everything is very bad. Once again, we are talking about the responsibility of drone pilots who do not see the results of their actions up close. On the inadmissibility of using AI-controlled soldiers in battle. On the threat of protracted conflicts when using remote and robotic combat weapons. Yes, the topics are relevant, but they are submitted to Outside the Wire extremely inept and not at all catchy.

Most of the filming for Outside the Wire took place in Budapest back in August 2019, which is another problem with the film. Firstly, Budapest is not very much like Ukrainian cities, perhaps a little like Lviv, and secondly, so many mid-level action movies have been filmed in Hungary recently (thanks to the government's initiative that makes the life of filmmakers easier) that they all merged into one amorphous average action movie. For example, Outside the Wire is confusingly similar to the same Spectral / Spectral Analysis from Netflix, similar in setting and level of special effects, and filmed in the same Budapest.

As for the special effects ... they are the most common. Not brilliant, but not a failure either. Level of the same Spectral or Chinese films like The Wandering Earth . Considering that Ukrainian Postmodern Digital was also involved in the latter , I would not be surprised if they had a hand here too.

The fact that the events of the film take place in Ukraine is evidenced primarily by the numerous and, what is most interesting, the correct signs and inscriptions in Ukrainian. "Cream - tse Ukraine!" and "Glory to Ukraine!" here too. And also the fact that all the extras speak Ukrainian even in the English-language version of the film, both Resistance fighters and ordinary people, and even pro-Russian terrorists. Probably, thanks for this is worth saying to the same Postmodern studio, which was engaged in dubbing the film for Netflix. As for the voice acting and subtitles, Postmodern has enough experience in this matter, so everything here is done at the level of films that get into the Ukrainian film distribution, that is, excellent.

In general, the appearance on Netflix of the first film with Ukrainian voice acting on the day of release is a great victory. So, if you have a Netflix account, we recommend watching Outside the Wire, and in Ukrainian, even though its rating is low, just to show Netflix that such voice acting is in demand.

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