Fuze (15)

A construction crew on a London building site unearths an unexploded Second World War bomb and alerts the authorities. Metropolitan Police Chief Superintendent Zuzana co-ordinates the immediate evacuation of residents and workers while bomb disposal expert Major Will Tranter and his team swing into action. As police focus on maintaining calm, thief Karalis and his crew including right-hand man X target the safety deposit vault of a bank close to the building site.

LondonNet Film Review

Fuze (15) Film Review from LondonNet

Ten years ago, Northumberland-born director David Mackenzie masterminded one of the great 21st-century heist films, Hell Or High Water, about a pair of brothers played by Chris Pine and Ben Foster who rob banks to save their Texan family ranch from foreclosure. Frustratingly, the slow-burning fuse on his new crime thriller, staged in the heart of London, turns out to be a damp squib. Fuze fizzles out before an unnecessary and plodding coda that explicitly recreates the characters’ tangled back story from earlier expository dialogue…

A construction crew on a building site unearths an unexploded Second World War bomb and immediately alerts the authorities. Metropolitan Police Chief Superintendent Zuzana (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) coordinates the evacuation of all residents and workers from a one-mile radius around the rusted munition while Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) expert Major Will Tranter (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), his deputy Military Sergeant Dootsie Keane (Saffron Hocking) and their team swing into action. They carefully inspect the bomb and identify the ticking of a timer that could complicate the operation. As the lead operative on scene, Tranter acts as a mentor to the newest member of his EOD squad, Martin (Alexander Arnold), so he can learn the best ways to deal with this high-pressure situation without knowingly endangering himself or anyone else in an army uniform.

While police focus on clearing the scene, master thief Karalis (Theo James) and his crew including right-hand man X (Sam Worthington) take full advantage of the deserted streets to target the safety deposit vault of a bank close to the affected building site. It’s imperative for the bomb disposal unit to work in silence but the robbers require noise as cover for their subterranean drilling. Meanwhile, immigrant son (Elham Ehsas) and his family, who live in an apartment adjacent to the targeted bank, wait for the all-clear so they can return home.

Fuze feels suitably lean and muscular with a 96-minute running time but there’s scant emotional meat on the brittle bones of Ben Hopkins’ script to sustain interest. Detonators repeatedly misfire, leaving behind a surprisingly simplistic tale of retribution and reward that telegraphs its intentions far in advance. Suspense instantly dissipates.

Taylor-Johnson caters to his thirsty fanbase with gratuitous buttock nudity in a steamy shower scene, which serves no narrative purpose, while James retains a firm grasp of a South African accent. Neither actor is stretched and co-stars Mbatha-Raw and Worthington are disappointingly minor cogs in the machine. Only one plot twist can’t be easily guessed, by design, but the rest are predictable. It’s frustrating that it takes so long for pennies to drop for the impacted characters. Almost everyone gets what they deserve but there’s no visceral thrill or comfort in small victories.

– Kim Hu