Fuze: Twisty, Fast-moving Heist Film Delivers Mad Skills and Real Thrills

By Kim Hughes

Rating: A

Few genres involve the audience quite like heist movies, which demand attention to detail to spot cracks in logic or plotting.

And few heist movies travel like Fuze, which proceeds at warp speed from the start. It’s genuinely exciting and very twisty, so drink (or ingest) before viewing at your peril. And don’t go alone; you’ll want to compare notes with someone afterwards.

The trailer neatly lays out the basics: an unexploded and apparently live 500 kg bomb dating to World War II is discovered buried in central London by a construction excavation crew. Bobbies descend to evacuate the surrounding area. This being modern London, there’s a lot of people to corral.

But inside one of the many apartments in a densely inhabited block, men remain seated with blinds drawn despite the warning knocks at the front door. They won’t stay inside for long. Once a vast swath of city has been cleared, and electricity cut, this bunch springs into action.

As the military focuses on the bomb — and the police coordinate from HQ via countless surveillance cameras planted everywhere — the thieves begin the elaborate and complex process of breaking into a bank situated smack in the evacuation zone. These two events must be connected, but how? Also, whoa, what a concept!

That’s just the first of many mysteries dangled in Fuze’s intricate plot, which leans heavily into high-tech gadgetry but offers dialogue only as necessary. The film’s first half focuses on the experts sent to deal with the bomb and led by explosives lead Tranter (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a tough-as-nails and seemingly fearless veteran of Afghanistan. Meantime, Theo James leads a crew including Sam Worthington into the bowels of the bank.

Watching it unfold from central command is top cop Greenfield (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and her team who, via infrared observation, become alerted to activity in the evacuated area. So begins the twin high-stakes missions of defusing the bomb and capturing the robbers who are very clever indeed and didn’t just throw this heist plan together in an afternoon. Their brilliant chicanery, another heist film hallmark, is giddy fun to observe.

Who to trust and who is in on the heist — not to mention the world’s boldest diversion tactic — is the head-spinning pulse of the film as alliances shift, double-crosses unfold, and red herrings abound. Or do they?

To wit: one of Tranter’s solider sidekicks notices an “anomaly” with the bomb. There’s a lack of corrosion one would expect in a metal device that has been stewing in subterranean moisture for eight decades. Is Tranter deliberately reluctant to investigate or is the tension of the moment clouding his better judgment? You get the picture; nothing is as it seems. Until it is.

Director David Mackenzie, reunited here with his Hell or High Water director of photography Giles Nuttgens — and working with a script by Ben Hopkins — is relentless in approach, deploying every cinematic tool in the kit, from white-knuckle aerial shots to claustrophobic closeups and very sharp edits, keeping things percolating throughout.

Even pondering the logistics of making this movie, which was shot on location in west and northwest London (“With road closures and a real-life lockdown of sorts required to pull off a believably deserted cityscape,” reports Time Out) is exhausting.

Sidebar: if Taylor-Johnson is being courted as the next James Bond, as rumoured, and this is an indication of how he wrangles action, count us in. (Cannot wait for the romance part!)

Fuze’s denouement is terrific, completely unpredictable and surprisingly funny. It’s as if summer blockbuster season came early. Fuze is… wait for it… a must-see blast. Sorry, had to be done.

Fuze. Directed by David Mackenzie. Starring Theo James, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and Sam Worthington. In theatres April 24.