Hell or High Water director David Mackenzie returns with another tightly-wound pot-boiler for Sky that slowly runs out of steam over a tense but disappointing 90 minutes.
Fuze is the latest effort from the hit-or-miss thriller maestro, who impressed last year with his riveting yet somewhat dissatisfying Relay, which similarly threw out most of its goodwill with a rather baffling third-act reveal.
This time around, dependable Brits Theo James and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, along with rather underused supporting stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Sam Worthington, lead a gritty, inner-city heist film that starts off strong but quickly squanders its promising premise with a growing stack of twists that completely topple over by the final few minutes.
Fuze cast (Image: SKY)
Taylor-Johnson struggles in the lead role as grizzled soldier Will Tranter, an army major we’re told (in thuddingly clumsy exposition) has a history of insubordination, and who is tasked with investigating an unexploded World War 2 bomb that’s uncovered on a London building site.
His believability as an authority figure is almost immediately called into question, both by the audience and an eagle-eyed member of his unit, who isn’t convinced the device was actually dropped in the 1940s. Meanwhile, James, adopting an unusually convincing South African accent as enigmatic career criminal Karalis, is leading a risky bank job just a few streets away while the police are distracted by an evacuation.
Fuze certainly begins on an encouraging note, with some beguiling moments of the so-called “competency porn” that has gripped fans of superior slick thrillers such as The Killer or The Martian. It’s fascinating watching the process of disarming a bomb play out, while James and his crew glide through a near-silent bank heist with propulsive beats pumping on the soundtrack like they’re in a David Fincher film.
Unfortunately, where things start going wrong for Karalis and Tranter and the real plan (inside other plans, inside yet another plan) becomes apparent is also where Mackenzie and screenwriter Ben Hopkins’ grasp on the narrative begins to unravel.
Fuze is out in cinemas from Friday (Image: SKY)
The big swings here are admirable, but rarely work when they hinge so heavily on new elements and characters that were either barely present or completely absent throughout the first half. And, by the time the script stumbles into a last-minute reveal that’s forced to flashback to several years prior to the main event to make any sense, you’ll have checked your watch so many times that the rotation of the secondhand will seem riveting in comparison to what’s on screen.
After Mackenzie’s underrated Relay, which incidentally is streaming on Prime Video and well worth a watch even with its deflating climax, was a promising return to form for the Hell or High Water director, Fuze is a slapdash step backwards.
Rather than what should have been a streamlined tension-builder, the final product feels like a selection of first-draft ideas that were hastily stitched together because they seemed cool at the time.
Theo James as a chaotic South African gangster with a secret? Okay. Gugu Mbatha-Raw as an ice-cold chief of police hot on his tail? Nice. Aaron Taylor-Johnson as a rigid military type with a growly timbre and big arms? What else? But the energy in both the cast and script sadly just isn’t there to carry this flimsy script to the finish line.
What could have been the ingredients for an unassuming pleasant surprise with a twist that leaves you shellshocked ultimately fails to detonate with any impact. While Fuze will be released in cinemas, its later release on Sky paints a more accurate picture of its fate as forgettable streaming fodder that no one will be talking about by this time next year.
Fuze is out exclusively in UK cinemas from Friday.