Fuze – Review

Cert – 15, Run-time – 1 hour 36 minutes, Director – David Mackenzie

When an unexploded World War II bomb is discovered in central London a group of criminals use the evacuation as their opportunity to pull off a bank heist.

Fuze is a film of competence. A competent bomb defusal attempt, a competent bank robbery attempt, a competently made film. Everything is done with a general satisfying-enough competence from start to finish. One event’s charge leads to another’s eventual taking over as the discovery of an unexploded World War II bomb leads part of central London to be evacuated and shut down. A group of criminals take this opportunity, staying shielded in a block of flats until they can move without being caught, to rob the boxes in the vault of the bank next door.

While the former strand remains more thrilling, and I could have gladly watched 90-minutes of just that, the heist aspect eventually takes over and starts to form the basis of the second half of the film. Yet, Ben Hopkins’ screenplay, and the splicing of the two events, makes it feel as if there are two different films playing out rather than something joint, even when they start to come together in an almost tangling set of events which start to slightly push the feeling of the run-time. One which is extended with a slightly unnecessary tag-on and Fish Called Wanda style ‘what happened’ credits, slightly more baffling due to the lack of comedic push in the rest of the film.

However, there’s still a generally engaging piece of work here. One that captures a tension in the race against uncertain time aspect of the defusal (led by Aaron Taylor-Johnson) with help from communications between the army who have been called in to deal with the task and the police (largely represented by Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who doesn’t get a great deal to do here). Again, it’s all competently captured with effect scattered around, largely in the bomb aspect which kicks things off and is principally followed for a good time. Things may feel separate for a while, perhaps more than intentionally, and near a tangle, but things still remain engaging with enough to see the various developments through. It’s all rather competently done.

The most competent film of the year. Fuze occasionally feels like two films, largely before the third act, but there’s still a likable and sporadically tense film here that seems to somewhat acknowledge where its strengths are.