Final Rating: 3/5
Fuze, the latest from British director David Mackenzie is a heist film that dumps a jigsaw puzzle into viewers laps and tells them to wait patiently as it puts together the pieces. But much like doing a puzzle, people looking at it will be able to figure out what the image is long before we finish it, even if we still are having a good time.
When a construction worker manning a backhoe accidentally digs upon an old WW2 era bomb that was dropped but never detonated in London the military are tasked with assessing if it is harmless or could still blow up. The soldier responsible for defusing the bomb is Major Will Tranter (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a former Afghanistan veteran who after watching soldiers in his unit die suffers from PTSD and disrespects authority figures. He arrives on scene and begins coordinating with local police to handle the situation. His goals are to ensure the safety of everyone around him first and foremost.
Tranter liaises with Chief Superintendent Zuzana (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) who works as an eye in the sky making sure people are being evacuated and giving orders to police units about when they can enter the zone and what to be on the look out for by using satellite imagery and CCTV cameras. Between their two teams we get the great tension of smart, skilled officials who are competent at their job in a high stakes situation.
After the neighbourhood is cleared out and the bomb inspection is going on, it is revealed that a group of men, who ignored the evacuation notice, are using the basement of the flat they are hiding in to break into the bank next door. Then it becomes apparent that this found bomb is actually a distraction as the thieves are there to steal something important.
We watch as the expert thieves set up battery powered lights and use generators to drill through the walls while the power is out and everyone is gone. They break into safety deposit boxes clearing the cash and jewelry found (and leaving the too heavy gold bricks), but the ring leader of the group, Karalis (Theo James) has his eye on a specific box that contains a large envelope.
Eventually the bomb goes off, but not before one of the subordinates under Tranter’s command starts raising issues about the veracity of the bomb’s origin. At the same time the thieves are making a getaway. From there we get crosses and double crosses, something that every great caper film must feature. We also have to look across the board and figure out who is working with who, and who is in danger of being “in the way”.
Mackenzie is great at making thrillers, having directed the fantastic crime film Hell or High Water or the tension filled prison drama Starred Up. Here he shows us all he has learned, giving us smart criminals and law enforcement, which is the only suitable combination for a crime film (unless it is a comedy where both sides of the law are dumb). The gang breaking in has the dedication and smarts of the criminals from Michael Mann’s Heat and Thief (using similar tactics as the later two). It also features a protagonist criminal who is after a very specific lock box that would incriminate its owner like in Spike Lee’s Inside Man, and the needing to stay silent at certain points of the robbery like in Rififi.
The film wears its influences on its sleeves, as the ticking diegetic bomb becomes a part of the score, making sure our heart rate stays elevated while we know the stakes. We see the police slowly realize in the neighbourhood as it is without power there is a generator running as it shows up on a heat map. They send police to investigate and that’s when things hit the fan.
Very quickly we are told who we should be suspicious of as work is seemingly compromised and thinly veiled lies are exposed. This is all par the course for a heist film, and something every crime film aficionado lives for. The biggest issue with the entire film is do we care about why the robbery is happening. In Thief it is about a man who dreams of a perfect life and recapturing what was lost behind bars, in Inside Man Clive Owen is on a mission to blackmail or expose a former Nazi criminal, in Heat we see a man with a code so strong as he gets put to the test of what his limits are. Here we get an excuse about a former employer wanting to kill Karalis and this is his payback.
For any film where the bad guys are the people you should be rooting for, you need to have a rock solid reason. Whether that is Killmonger rejecting Wakanda from keeping their knowledge to themselves as the rest of Africa suffers in Black Panther or Roy Batty in Blade Runner who is being hunted down just for wanting to live past his supposed expiration date. We spend so much time with these genius criminals, there needs to be a payoff as to why they are doing what they are doing. Is the product illegal contraband and it deserves to go to its rightful owners (Inside Man)? Is the person they are stealing from even worse (Ocean’s 11)?
Unfortunately the reveal of Fuze doesn’t hold up to what you expect when you are rooting for the “bad guys”. Without spoiling the film, the connection between the different crews and the rationale for needing to break into the bank doesn’t add up. To make matters worse there is an end credit title card for what happens to the characters when the film was pure fiction. Mackenzie tries to play it off as comedic, but it is out of touch for the rest of the film.
Fuze is a heart pounding thriller until it comes time to answers. Then the fuse dies out and the audience is left with more questions than answers. Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Theo James, Sam Worthington (as one of the heist members), Gugu Mbatha-Raw and more are all great in their roles that have them play the trope crime characters, but are eventually let down by the script.
Fuze was seen during the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.
