Fuze Is the Heist Thriller Everyone Missed

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There is a new heist movie that seemed to come and go without much attention, and I honestly have no idea why. Fuze stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Sam Worthington, comes from Hell or High Water director David Mackenzie, and has one of the more clever crime-movie setups I have seen in a while.

An unexploded World War II bomb is discovered beneath a construction site in the middle of London. Police and the military evacuate a huge section of the city while Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s bomb disposal expert tries to figure out whether the bomb is stable, how dangerous it is and how much time they have before things go very wrong.

Meanwhile, somebody realizes that several evacuated city blocks make pretty good cover for a heist.

The Setup Is the Movie

What I like most about Fuze is how quickly it gets moving. There is no 30-minute prologue explaining everyone’s childhood trauma or a bunch of scenes teasing a sequel. The bomb is discovered, the evacuation starts and the movie is already underway.

From there, you have two stories running at the same time. One group is trying to keep a bomb from detonating while another is using the emergency to pull off a robbery. The fun comes from watching those two situations slowly crash into each other.

That is a simple idea, but it is a really good one.

This Is Not Another Hell or High Water

Because David Mackenzie directed Hell or High Water, that is going to be the obvious comparison. The two movies are very different.

Hell or High Water is really a melancholy drama about family, poverty, debt and a dying part of America that just happens to involve bank robberies. Fuze is much more interested in giving you about 95 minutes of pressure, logistics, double crosses and people trying to stay one step ahead of each other.

Sometimes that is exactly what I want.

It reminds me more of movies like The Taking of Pelham One Two Three or The Bank Job, where a big part of the entertainment is simply watching a complicated criminal plan unfold while the authorities gradually realize there is more going on than they thought.

London Turns Into a Giant Pressure Cooker

Mackenzie has always been good at making locations feel important, and Fuze uses the evacuation really well. Empty streets that would normally be packed with people suddenly feel strange and dangerous, while the bomb disposal scenes have this constant sense that everything could disappear in an instant.

The movie keeps bouncing between that threat and the heist, which gives both sides of the story more urgency. The bomb is not just some gimmick happening in the background. It changes the entire environment and creates the opportunity for the crime in the first place.

By the time the different pieces start coming together, London basically feels like one giant rat trap.

Lean Is Both the Strength and the Weakness

I do not want to oversell Fuze. This is not some lost masterpiece, and it does not have the emotional weight of Hell or High Water or the raw intensity of Mackenzie’s prison movie Starred Up.

Some of the characters are pretty thin, and there are actors in this movie I would have liked to spend more time with. The tradeoff is that Fuze rarely slows down long enough to give them that extra depth.

For me, that mostly works because the movie is built for momentum. It gets everybody into position, starts tightening the screws and keeps moving.

There is something refreshing about a thriller that understands exactly what it wants to be.

David Mackenzie Is Really Good at Pressure

The main reason I wanted to talk about Fuze is David Mackenzie. His movies can look completely different on the surface, but so many of them are really about people trapped under pressure.

Starred Up turns a prison into a pressure cooker. Hell or High Water uses robberies to push desperate people toward inevitable mistakes. Outlaw King proves he can take that same tension and blow it up to the scale of brutal medieval warfare.

Then there is Relay, another overlooked thriller that is much quieter and more paranoid. It is built around tradecraft, communication and people carefully trying not to expose themselves. Fuze feels almost like its louder, more muscular cousin.

Mackenzie seems to understand that the interesting part of a crime story is not simply that money is involved. It is watching people improvise under pressure and waiting to see who makes the first mistake.

Why Fuze Is Worth Watching

Fuze is not trying to reinvent the heist movie. It is not trying to become the most emotional crime drama you have ever seen either.

It is a nasty little pressure-cooker thriller with a fresh setup, a strong cast and enough moving parts to keep you wondering how everything is going to come together.

I miss movies like this. Movies that can just give you a clever premise, good actors and 90-something minutes of escalating trouble without turning everything into a giant franchise.

If that sounds like your kind of crime movie, Fuze is absolutely worth putting on your radar.

Prefer to Watch Instead?

If you would rather watch than read, I cover Fuze in the video below with clips from the movie and a closer look at David Mackenzie’s other thrillers including Hell or High Water, Starred Up and Relay.

Watch my video review of Fuze