A twisty thriller that starts out fun enough before taking a sharp turn into galaxy-brained absurdity in the final stretch, “Fuze” is a fascinating film to attempt to piece together. This is not because it’s really all that complicated in terms of its approach, which feels like a throwback to old ticking clock heist thrillers with modern technology updating the way it’s pulled off. No, it’s how it is increasingly about a mystery that’s not really a mystery and characters who end up aligned via a wildly unnecessary drawn-out backstory near the very end that proves borderline comical. However, the film is also a hoot and holler, ensuring all excesses eventually blend in as part of the meat and potatoes stew it is cooking.
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Much like the bomb disposal unit that the story initially builds itself around when they get called in to safely dispose of an old weapon found at a construction site in London, only to discover much more is going on, all of the focus and attention to detail in building up the tension is what holds “Fuze” together.
Directed by David Mackenzie, who is operating more in the vein of the recent, quite fun film “Relay” than he is the outstanding “Hell or High Water,” the film settles into a solid rhythm as we focus on the way the city shuts down. As the head of a bomb squad disposal unit (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) tries to ensure that everyone is safe in case things go terribly awry, a group of men led by a wildcard of a leader (Theo James) use all the chaos as cover to rob a bank. It’s ludicrous if you think about it for more than a second, but when you have someone like the great Gugu Mbatha-Raw as the head of the whole operation, intensely staring at screens, you get wrapped up in it anyway.
Any hints about how this ultimately comes together would rob the film of its fun, but it’s also impossible not to talk about everything that eventually gets ridiculous. What can be said is that the bomb is only the beginning, as there are enough reversals of allegiance and betrayals for ten films, let alone one. This threatens to shatter the movie at a certain point as it reduces the more focused thriller elements to background noise as we wait for each successive shoe to drop.
To writer Ben Hopkins, every new development is an opportunity to stack in more twists, even as the film worked better when it kept things simple. It’s like watching someone build up a series of uniform blocks one by one before getting reckless and adding more ridiculously shaped ones on top. Soon, it comes crashing down.
But what fun it is to see it all the same. Even as “Fuze” is not a great film, let alone one that will be remembered as a classic new take on the genre, it’s an endlessly watchable one. Even as it blinks in the face of its more thorny backstory surrounding war and the trauma that comes from it, making you wonder why this was even thrown in at all, the largely propulsive pace helps smooth over all the bumps in the road. Though you almost wish there was a film that was more confined and restrained in how it focused on defusing a bomb, which ends up merely being the opening salvo of the volley of thriller silliness “Fuze” throws at you, it’s also impossible to dismiss the craft on display. That is, until the very final sequence that goes on after what could and should have been a final shot.
Without explicitly explaining what happens, “Fuze” closes on an extended flashback that feels ripped from an entirely different movie. Both the reliance on visual effects, the borderline slapstick tone, and the cartoonish acting are so over the top that you feel like you’ve just been thrown out of the plane that was smoothly flying along up until that point. While this sequence could only exist near the end, putting it as the final note is borderline bizarre and leaves you just baffled, mainly by why it’s there. It might fit a bit better if it had been just ten minutes earlier, but even that feels like a stretch. It doesn’t completely undo the movie, but it comes awfully close. [B-]
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