Fuze: Movie Review

Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Sam Worthington, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Theo James
Director: David Mackenzie

The discovery of a World War II bomb at a building site in downtown London is the ticking fuse that lights a fire under Hell Or High Water director Mackenzie's latest - but thanks to choppy editing, most of the suspense is sucked from the premise.

As the police seal off and evacuate the area (led by Mbatha-Raw's deadpan Chief Superintendent), a military bomb defusal squad, led by Taylor-Johnson's clearly-got-something-to-prove Will Tranter steps in. But as soon as the area is cleared, a heist of a nearby bank begins...

Meshing the kind of cliffhanger twists you'd get in a pulpy Netflix "watch another right now" thriller with the kind of absurdism viewed in the likes of Trigger Point, Fuze deploys its propulsive touch to maximum effect - even if the final third of the film tries to pack more twists than you'd ever think plausible.

Some, however, work, but the ledger's very strongly stacked in favour of the deliberately deployed for the sake of the story.

But perhaps that's part of the proposed thrill of this - Mackenzie's movie doesn't stand still long enough to allow you to consider its contrivances. And certainly, the cross-cut editing, jumping from one scene to the next, allows you little time to deeply engage with the characters.

From scenes in a command centre which follow Exposition 101 to doubts at the bomb site via shady goings-on and thieves falling apart, Fuze ticks all of the genre tropes while using them to stack a story in a different way.

Yet, it's debatably a failure - albeit one that zips its way through perfunctory set-up and execution.

With cursory dialogue serving up pernicious pieces of back-story, the narrative falls into a trap of overloading the bases before showing all of its cards in one final go. It's a move that sadly doesn't work for bomb-thriller heist Fuze, proving this is more damp squib than highly explosive.