Review: In 'Outside the Wire," a military officer meets an android warrior, but the sparks never fly.

One thing a viewer never need worry about during the future-set war thriller “Outside the Wire” is not knowing what’s happening in the plot — because someone, usually star Anthony Mackie, will stop in his tracks to explain it, over and over again, stopping the action dead.

Convoluted only in the sense that no one will care to follow it, “Outside the Wire” begins in the year 2036 with Lt. Thomas Harp (Damson Idris), a self-assured drone pilot who fires missiles into combat situations with calm assurance, from the relative comfort of a military base in Nevada. On one such drone strike, he fires into a shooting situation and kills two Marines — though Harp defends his actions, under the cold calculation that he saved the other 38 Marines on that mission.

Instead of a court-martial, Harp is sent to the war zone where his drone was flying, deep in Ukraine. In the combat area, oversized battle robots, called Gumps, accompany human troops on missions, mostly to maintain an uneasy truce between a rebel group and a shadowy warlord, Viktor Koval (Pilou Asbaek, from “Game of Thrones”). Harp is assigned to work with Capt. Leo (Anthony Mackie), who is running a stealth mission to deliver vaccines to a field hospital outside the American military perimeter.

Harp quickly learns two things about Leo. One is that the vaccine mission is a cover for his true purpose, which is to hunt down Koval. The second, which actually comes first, is that Leo is an android, a next-generation robot soldier who can think independently of military constraints. Leo can also smile, laugh, hurl insults and swear like Samuel L. Jackson on a snake-filled plane.

Director Michael Håfström (“Escape Plan,” “The Rite”), working off a hash of a script by Rowan Athale and Rob Yescombe, ploddingly alternates between talky exposition scenes and hamfisted action sequences that are bloody enough to make one realize Leo never read Asimov’s First Law of Robotics — “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm” — and certainly never read my First Law of Action Movies: Don’t be boring.

The most interesting aspect of “Outside the Wire” is a late-innings plot twist that would only be shocking if the movie ever encouraged the audience to connect in any way with Leo or Harp. As much as Mackie aims to bring some authenticity to his android character, this movie is as lifeless as a switched-off robot.

——

‘Outside the Wire’

★★

Available for streaming Friday, January 15, on Netflix. Rated R for strong violence and language throughout. Running time: 115 minutes.