00:00An unexploded bomb isn't the only thing that's going off in the British action thriller Fuse.
00:05When an unexploded World War II bomb is found on a construction site near Edgware Road,
00:09the whole area is evacuated and disposal expert Aaron Taylor-Johnson has called in to defuse it.
00:15But a group of thieves led by Theo James and Sam Worthington are using the bomb as a distraction for
00:20a bank heist
00:20and the clock is ticking for Gugu Mbatha-Raw's chief superintendent to catch them.
00:25Fuse is helmed by veteran British journeyman director David McKenzie who is best known for Hell or High Water and
00:31Outlaw King
00:32which also featured Taylor-Johnson and he's been on a bit of a thriller kick lately between this and his
00:37last film Relay
00:39which also stars Sam Worthington.
00:41The film's got a pretty solid premise reminiscent of Worthington's earlier film Man on a Ledge
00:45but especially Die Hard with a Vengeance and like that movie some of the film's best moments are how the
00:51locals of the city
00:52in this case London, respond to the situation in ways that add colour and realism.
00:57You have all these different subplots playing out in parallel including a fourth plotline
01:00focusing on the immigrant owners of the bank being robbed and their son Elham Asaz
01:05all linked by the bomb and the scenes of Aaron Taylor-Johnson's swaggering but traumatised army officer
01:10trying to defuse it are very reminiscent of the Hurt Locker if not quite as nail-biting.
01:15And McKenzie's direction does a good job marshalling it keeping the pace and suspense
01:19taut as a near constant series of ticking clocks and chases that's always moving and even exciting in the moment.
01:26But whilst Ben Hopkins' scripts might be packed full of incidents it makes one absolutely fatal mistake
01:32and that's that it forgets to give you any actual reason to care or invest in any of it.
01:37Characterisation is scant here with most of them barely getting any kind of introduction
01:41and they're largely functional mostly taking and barking orders at each other.
01:46After a certain point I realised that I didn't really know who any of these people were
01:50or why the thieves were doing any of it as other than James' South African-accented diamond smuggler
01:55his cohorts are simply created as XYZ.
01:58It feels like a movie where they didn't really know who their protagonist was meant to be
02:01or who we're meant to be rooting for and I still don't think the filmmakers know even after they made
02:06it
02:06so it's strangely amoral.
02:08The reason for this is that they're delaying information to preserve later plot turns
02:12but the more twists the movie makes the less convinced I am that it makes any kind of sense.
02:18But it also means lots of clumsily backfilled exposition to explain it all
02:22like someone leaving a scrapbook of their whole backstory just for the other characters to find.
02:27The whole thing is very oddly structured where a crucial flashback
02:31the inciting incident of the whole film is awkwardly bolted on at the end
02:35like they have no idea where to put it with a weirdly jokey closing text
02:40like out of a Guy Ritchie film that doesn't fit the tone beforehand.
02:45Ultimately Fuse tries so hard to be surprising that the entire third act just implodes.
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