A pretzel of a heist and bomb thriller.
A decade ago, David Mackenzie made one of the best bank heist movies of all time called “Hell or High Water.” A decade later, his latest entry is “Fuze,” which works as both a heist picture and bomb thriller. Set in Paddington in London, an unexploded WWII bomb has been discovered on a construction site and the area has been evacuated, while group of criminals pull off a bank robbery. Never seeing a trailer for this movie, I was taken in by where it was going.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson stars as Major Will Tranter, whose team is assigned to disarm the bomb, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw plays the Chief Superintendent of the police, who orders the evacuation. You must admire the authenticity of the police keeping the people out of danger-one of them has to run to get his laptop-and them asking questions about when they can return to their homes. After the bomb detonates, they’re not entirely sure it is from WWII. And maybe it was something else.
The robbers, who are labeled by letters (Sam Worthington as X, Shaun Mason as Y, and Nabil Elouahabi as Z) and led by Karalis (Theo James), steal money and jewelry, which they put in cardboard boxes and place on to drones. But of course, betrayal emerges within, thus proving to us the pretzel of the plot. How this is handled is elevated by the right angry and desperate dialogue and the versatility within the characters.
And we also get a family of Afghan immigrants-only the son Ramin (Elham Ehsas) speaks English-who are supposed to be preparing for a trip, but get sidelined by the bomb threat and the fact that their basement was used by the criminals.
In Mackenzie’s last film “Rely,” it played like a nice thriller within 75% of my enjoyment, while the other 25% of it left us disappointed with its ending. It was supposed to play as a plot twist, but it still felt kind of disappointing. In his new film “Fuze,” there are some plot twists within some of the characters, which might be a little complicated, but they aren’t played for desperation. They’re played for real character development, and the last 10-20 minutes really sets things in motion.
The movie was written by Ben Hopkins, whose credits include “The Nine Lives of Tomas Katz,” “Simon Magus,” and his last writing job “Inside.” And like “Hell or High Water,” this is another bank robbery thriller that doesn’t resort to cliches (no police arrest the thieves in the end) and handles the genre in its own matter. It’s all with a sense of daring and style (and I love how the film closes with The Clash’s “Police and Thieves”). And the performances are excellent, especially by James, Taylor-Johnson, and Ehsas, because of how they respectively reach a certain tone and development. And without seeing a trailer, you don’t even know where they’re going, and you want to know more.
I’m sure “Fuze” will be buried by some of the big movies like the bold, hilarious, and visually stunning “Project Hail Mary,” the spoiled and Easter egg minded “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,” and the new Michael Jackson biopic “Michael.” But ignore whatever cynicism and doubt your mind is giving you, and give this movie a go. Bombs away!
