Aaron Taylor-Johnson portrays the stoic Major Will Tranter in Fuze.Roadside Attractions/Supplied
Fuze
Directed by David Mackenzie
Written by Ben Hopkins
Starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Theo James and Sam Worthington
Classification N/A; 96 minutes
Opens in theatres April 24
After delivering a taut, high-concept thriller that devolved into a twisty bit of nonsense with last year’s Relay, director David Mackenzie is back with Fuze, a taut, high-concept thriller that devolves into ... well, you know.
But whereas Relay had a compelling lead in Riz Ahmed, and Mackenzie’s previous work pivoted around strong performances from such stars as Chris Pine (Hell or High Water), Jack O’Connell (Starred Up) and Chris Pine again (Outlaw King), Fuze boasts an unfortunately cast handful of leading men whose visages and on-screen energies are rather interchangeable.
On one end of the action is Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Tenet), who plays the stoic Major Will Tranter, called into a London construction site after an unexploded bomb from the Second World War is inadvertently unearthed.
In Fuze, Theo James and his team of crooks orchestrate a bank heist while Taylor-Johnson helps deal with a bomb threat.Roadside Attractions/Supplied
As Tranter co-ordinates with local police to cordon off the area and hopefully defuse the bomb before it takes out a city block, a crew of crooks led by Karalis (played by Theo James of The White Lotus) has miraculously timed a bank heist with the discovery of the bomb and the area’s subsequent evacuation. Karalis is aided in this endeavour by a no-name bloke played by the film’s third handsome but bland lead, Sam Worthington (Avatar).
Eventually, all three super-stubbly men are united in a narrative that piles twist upon twist, to the point of irredeemable silliness.
What’s worse than all the contrivances, though, is that even if you can navigate the many turns of Ben Hopkins’s script, you then have to accept that at least one of the characters listed above comes out of the thing looking like a true-blue hero, despite having done some genuinely horrible things to get to that point. It is the kind of screenplay that erases itself with one minute of second thought.
Fuze, which was given the increasingly dubious distinction of securing a world premiere Gala slot at the Toronto International Film Festival this past fall, simply and frequently fails to justify its many swerves, triple crosses and fondness for chaotic shoot-outs. Much like its central plot device, Mackenzie’s film is a bomb hiding in plain sight – get too close and you’ll be blown to bits.