FUZE (2025)

Starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Theo James, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Sam Worthington, Saffron Hocking, Elham Ehsas, Shaun Mason, Nabil Elouahabi, Alexander Arnold, Honor Swinton Byrne, Luke Mably, Iain Fletcher, Samuel Oatley, Dragos Bucur, Syiah George, Matthew Earley, Laurie Duncan, Earl Asembi, Hannah Collins, Jameela Shafaq and Sabawoon Safi.

Screenplay by Ben Hopkins.

Directed by David Mackenzie.

Distributed by Saban Films. 96 minutes. Rated R.

While excavating an empty lot in the middle of London, a construction crew stumbles upon an unexploded World War II bomb buried in the ditch. For public safety, the entire neighborhood is evacuated, and all electricity is turned off in the area. A military bomb squad is called to the site, where they have to race against time to defuse the bomb before a few city blocks are potentially destroyed.

At the exact same time, a group of thieves take advantage of the situation to burrow into the sewers and tunnels of the area and drill their way into the safe of a local bank, knowing that the police are all occupied with the crisis, the alarm will be disarmed and there will be no one around to hear their work.

This is a cool concept – at least in theory. However, it doesn’t quite explain how the bad guys knew what was going to happen. Their bank-robbing scheme is obviously intricately plotted, but how can you plan for something as random as an unexploded piece of World War II-era artillery to be found in the middle of a busy London neighborhood and the police having to evacuate the area and turn off the power for the region? It seems like a huge coincidence.

The script treats the discovery of the WWII bomb as if it were a scheduled municipal event rather than a freak accident. Their entire heist hinges on a once-in-a-century coincidence – the kind of narrative leap that only works if the film sells the illusion with absolute confidence. Fuze never quite does. Instead, you’re left wondering how these guys supposedly predicted the exact day a construction crew would dig up a decades-old explosive and trigger a mass evacuation.

Which makes you wonder – was it all a massive setup to hide what seems to be a pretty garden-variety bank job? Where would they get the bomb? How would they have buried it and made it look authentic that it has been buried for decades? It feels like a huge, extremely complicated plot just to steal cash and light jewelry. (One of the thieves even refuses to take found gold bars because they are too heavy.)

As the story unfolds, the film piles on double-crosses, secret agendas, and shifting alliances. Some of these twists are fun in a pulpy, Saturday-night-thriller way. Others feel like the movie is trying to outsmart itself. David Mackenzie directs with urgency, but the script keeps introducing new wrinkles that strain credibility rather than deepen the tension. Even the cast – a solid lineup including Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Theo James, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw – can only do so much when characters are required to pivot motivations every 15 minutes.

At the end credits, there are even some snarky “whatever happened to” chyrons which suggest that this is all based on a true story. Is it really? Apparently not, at least as far as I can find it is completely fictional. It’s just one more example of the misdirection that the film specializes in.

The faux–“based on a true story” chyrons in the end credits are a clever touch, but they also underline the film’s identity crisis. Is Fuze a gritty procedural? A heist caper? A satire of heist capers? The movie never fully decides, and the tonal drift makes the later twists feel less like revelations and more like narrative curveballs tossed in for sport.

So whether or not Fuze works for you as a viewer pretty much depends on whether you buy into the tale it is spinning. For me, somewhat, but never totally. And as the solutions start to unfold, the story becomes more and more ridiculous and hard to buy into, to the point where the final surprise reveal was a plot twist too far for me.

But the movie had a good setup. That’s something, right? Too bad the payoff is so slight.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2026 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: May 24, 2026.