'Fuze' director David Mackenzie and stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Sam Worthington dish on their heist thriller at THR's TIFF lounge at the 1 Hotel Toronto. Mackenzie breaks down how he came up with the idea for this movie while Mbatha-Raw and Worthington discuss how the script kept them guessing the entire time.
00:00It's always interesting when you hear a laugh, and you just feel like, okay, the audience are there in the right place, so there are a couple of sort of, you know, little, I mean, the film is not comedic, but all the films I do tend to have a little comedic kind of moment, so I'm looking forward to hearing that first laugh.
00:18You're going to be like, ah, they're into it.
00:20Yeah, yeah.
00:20Shoulders down.
00:21Talk to me about, like, coming up with, like, why you wanted to do this movie, coming up with the idea, what was it about this that you knew was...
00:33Well, it was an idea I had a long time ago just to try and do a sort of a very kinetic and sort of like almost a purely cinematic kind of film that involved the kind of dual tension of the Unexploded Bond movie and the heist movie.
00:49I hope it's kind of quite pure in its sort of cinematic qualities.
00:53Did you guess how it was all going to fit, like, where it was going to go, how it was all going to fit together?
00:58I was totally surprised.
01:00I had no idea.
01:01I mean, I think it really keeps you guessing, this script, and there's a few big twists and turns, which, you know, hopefully you don't see coming.
01:09I'm not very good at reading scripts.
01:12But I like the idea of it.
01:14I mean, I like, David's a very visceral director, so I knew that in his hands he'd be able to kind of ratchet the tension and make it something very commercial in its kind of thinking, in its making an exciting piece of cinema, rather than just, you know, I knew it was going to be like a bullet, which is what it feels like.
01:34Is it safe to tell people that you guys are on adversarial sides of the story?
01:39That will be clear in a trailer?
01:41I think that's pretty clear early on, where we're kind of on opposite sides of the law.
01:45People who won't, yeah.
01:45So did, okay, with that being said, what did you think about his motivations?
01:51To me, there was two parts to that kind of question.
01:55The first part was I thought if I was going to be involved in a heist movie, I wanted to be the one doing the heist.
02:00I love mechanics in films, and I know with David he has a great attention to detail, so I thought once you bring out hammers, drills, the getaway car, and all this other kind of mechanics of actually what it takes to perform a heist, I thought that would be very interesting for me to do.
02:15And I brought my son on set because I wanted to show him, you know, not necessarily how to do a heist, but I thought it would be kind of cool.
02:25And secondly, when I read it, I thought, well, how can I help serve this story?
02:30So I kind of said to him, if I play one of the henchmen, I can give you something that might bounce some of the, give the other actors something to bounce off.
02:39And I, look, I really like being able to support actors like Theo and, you know, Aaron Gugu, but, you know, I love that idea because I get front row seats at some great performances.
02:50And that's how I thought I could help serve the story, by coming in and going, look, just let me play in that world, and I might be able to give you something that can increase the tension on that side of the story.
03:01When did you two know that you liked working together?
03:04Me immediately.
03:05Me immediately, too. We did a TV series in Canada, actually, Under the Banner of Heaven.
03:12I just really like the kind of way that Sam works, and it's very kind of instinctive and honest and, you know, the way you find stuff and takes opportunities.
03:24I like directors that create a great world and a solid world and then let you play in that world.
03:30And I think that that's kind of how we kind of organically create things.
03:35And the authenticity of this world as well.
03:37I mean, we had real advisors from the police, from the army, from, I believe, bank robbing.
03:43But, you know, and, you know, again, to second what you're saying, you know, David creates such an authentic, grounded world.
03:53You know, I mean, it was so exhilarating and fast-paced, all of the stuff that we had in the command center, you know, in the police world, which in some ways you feel like you're removed from the action.
04:04You know, but it never felt like that because we had these continuous long takes and the camera was always moving.
04:10We were so free to move, and it really just felt, as I say, sort of grounded and gritty and exhilarating.
04:18Did you set out to be in a lot of thrillers, or is it that you were, you're good at it and then it kind of happened to you?
04:24Like, is it chicken or the egg?
04:25I don't know.
04:26Oh, yeah, just latterly, I've, you know, I've been doing a few thrillers.
04:31I guess they're sort of...
04:32I just wanted to get out of a corset, right?
04:33That's it.
04:34Getting out of a corset is always a bonus.
04:36The first time I met Goo Goo, we did a movie that never came out.
04:39Yes.
04:39I think it was finished.
04:40Yes, that's true.
04:41And she was in a very tight corset.
04:43Yeah.
04:43She goes, one day I'll do something other than corsets.
04:45Yeah.
04:46Then before you know it, robbery movie, robbery movie, cop movie.
04:49Yeah, I mean, it's mad.
04:51You know, I feel like I'm in my officer era at the moment.
04:53You know, I'm also now a police officer.
04:55I'm playing another character at the moment that's in the Navy.
04:58Like, you know, so I think for me it's really about having a grounded character to play
05:04that's nuanced in a world that, you know, I haven't done before.
05:09And, you know, getting the chance to film in London.
05:11I feel like London's its own character in this film as well.
05:14And for me, it's, you know, it's the people, it's the character,
05:19and sometimes it's the location too.
05:21The guys who are doing the heist, it's ingenious.
05:24It's all of the mechanic, like everything, engineering, everything they're doing.
05:29Where did you, like, learn how to write this crime?
05:34We base at least some of the getting through into the vault on a real robbery,
05:39quite a famous robbery that happened in London a few years ago.
05:43And so there were some mechanics of that that were similar.
05:47And I spoke to people who had done similar things.
05:54And so, and then the important thing was that when we were actually kind of, you know,
05:59breaking through the walls and all those kinds of things,
06:01that they were doing that very much for real.
06:03It was very, very sort of physical.
06:04And it, you know, although it was a set of some kind or a part of a set,
06:08we sort of almost shot that documentary style, you know.
06:11Just did it.
06:12Did the whole thing.
06:13Because they, they, they really didn't want to stop.
06:15I thought, let's just keep going.
06:16And I think you had guys come, who were willing to come in and help us take it apart.
06:20And I said, why don't we just keep doing it?
06:21And it was like the hottest day in London that day.
06:23I remember everyone was like, I wasn't in that scene,
06:26but I came onto that set later in the day.
06:28And the guys were like drenched in sweat, covered in dust.
06:32And everyone, you can feel the energy.
06:33You knew that you were really doing it for real.
06:35You keep hammering, keep drilling.
06:36I think the other actors thought we were crazy.
06:38Because they were waiting for a cut.
06:40And David just resets.
06:41And you just kept going and going.
06:43And I think then you see what comes out of it.
06:45You see the exhaustion it would take to actually perform that.
06:48You know, there's a very intellectual basis to what Aaron and the army are doing with the bomb.
06:53And I thought, how do we have the opposite of that?
06:56You know, if there's no lines on your side, then the robbery is very primal.
07:00And it still has an urgency.
07:01And the bomb in it is me.
07:03That's how I looked at it.
07:04I'm the bomb for Theo.
07:06Whereas Aaron's balance is an actual bomb that's willing to go off.
07:09Which has its own mechanics and its own detail, which I thought was great.
07:13Obviously, an unexploded bomb, that's historically accurate.
07:16But is that something that anyone in London ever thinks about?
07:19It's really happening.
07:20It happens all the time.
07:21Okay.
07:21In the 12 years since I first had the idea, I swear every year there's another report of a bomb on the...
07:28Well, there was one that we were filming.
07:30Do you remember I sent you that article?
07:32Some housing estate was evacuated, like second week into filming.
07:34Some in Australia's of them.
07:36Yeah.
07:36When my dad was building a house in Australia, there was bombs they were finding.
07:39It does sort of slightly worry me that an American audience might not understand that that's just a real thing.
07:47You know, they might think of it as a sort of fictional conceit, but it's definitely not a fictional conceit.
07:50The city's built on this war zone.
07:52Yeah.
07:52Yeah.
07:53I mean, it's all these places that had bombs in the Second World War.
07:56I mean, it's all these places that had bombs in the Second World War.
07:57I mean, it's all these places that had bombs in the Second World War.
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