‘Fuze’ review: Aaron Taylor-Johnson heads rote London-set action thriller from David Mackenzie

Dir: David Mackenzie. UK. 97mins

Seeking to be a nonstop adrenaline jolt, Fuze starts off strongly but eventually fizzles, its high-octane ambitions soon becoming mechanical and rote. Director David Mackenzie thrusts us in the middle of a bomb scare in Central London at the same time that enterprising criminals execute a daring bank heist. Certainly, there are plenty of shallow thrills to be had — until some obvious twists collide with a collection of threadbare characters.

 Little more than its dizzying forward momentum

This is Mackenzie’s fifth film to screen at Toronto — most recently was last year’s Relay — and Fuze should cater to B-movie action-thriller junkies. A notable cast led by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Theo James and Gugu Mbatha-Raw will further raise the film’s profile. But the story’s sleek escapism may not prove spectacular or original enough to merit major big-screen consideration, with streaming possibly being as attractive a commercial prospect.

Taylor-Johnson plays Will, an elite bomb disposal expert who has been assigned to deactivate an undetonated Second World War explosive excavated on a construction site. This is a delicate, dangerous operation requiring the evacuation of several city streets — the perfect distraction for Karalis (James) and his team of thieves to break into a nearby bank. But once Will realizes the bomb is actually of modern vintage, the police, led by Chief Superintendent Zuzana (Mbatha-Raw), begin to suspect a nefarious plot is afoot.

Ben Hopkins’ screenplay is a contemporary spin on an old-fashioned cops-and-robbers narrative with the forces of good trying to stop these enterprising crooks. (Karalis’ taciturn lieutenant, known only as X, is portrayed by a growly, underused Sam Worthington.) Tony Doogan’s frenetic electronic score juices every story beat, whether it’s Will sweating the defusing of the bomb or Karalis’ men methodically making their way to the safe. Throughout, editor Matt Mayer nimbly navigates between different locations and sets of action until, at last, Will and Karalis square off.

Mackenzie’s best films, such as Hell Or High Water, often balance suspense with sombre themes, which gives his genre exercises a deeper resonance. Here, however, he seems to relish the script’s empty-calorie excitement. The film pleasingly zips from incident to incident, the characters often talking in tough-guy shorthand befitting their confidence at being the best at what they do. Quite consciously, Fuze seems giddily stitched together from other pictures — Michael Mann and Guy Ritchie feel like key influences on the story’s headlong rush — and, once the surprises start being sprung, the director embraces a snarky, irreverent tone that suggests the audience should not take any of this too seriously.

It would be easier to accept the film’s rollicking excesses if the execution wasn’t so one-note. Both Fuze’s heroes and villains are bland types, so much so that when one of them predictably shifts allegiances, it’s hard to be surprised because of the characters’ interchangeability. Likewise, the script’s double-crosses and reversals feel arbitrary — merely excuses to keep the narrative engine revving. Mackenzie concentrates on the propulsive thrills to such a blinkered degree that the film is little more than its dizzying forward momentum, which results in a hollow viewing experience.

In such an atmosphere, the performers struggle to be more than cliches. To be fair, Mackenzie wants the characters to be defined by their jobs, boiling them down to their talents and savvy. Even so, it’s hard to care too deeply about these automatons. Taylor-Johnson, who previously collaborated with Mackenzie on 2018’s Outlaw King, has a swagger appropriate to a professional bomb-defuser, but there’s no inner life to Will. At least James gets more room to operate considering the frightening, bizarre complications Karalis faces once he pulls off the heist. Bringing an understated sense of humour to this thief’s increasingly absurd dilemmas, James lends a little wit to a film that promises turbo-charged fun but ends up running on fumes.