In David McKenzie’s propulsive thriller Fuze, everyone’s waiting for a bomb to go off. At a construction site in central London, workers have uncovered what looks to be a WWII-era explosive and the area is immediately cordoned off and evacuated. Major Will Tranter is overseeing the excavation and dismantling of the bomb and Aaron Taylor-Johnson gives the character a cheeky flair, even in the most dire of circumstances.

As the military and police are trying to contain the radius of damage, just down the street, a group of men led by Theo James is in the midst of a bank heist. The two events are clearly connected, but the thrust of Fuze is slowly revealing how (and why) a decades-old bomb and a South African diamond thief are intertwined.

Though Fuze sometimes has the air of a direct-to-video feature, McKenzie’s ᴅᴇᴀᴅ-serious take on the material and the pure star power (Sam Worthington and Gugu Mbatha-Raw also appear) give the film a much-needed boost. It’s not as intricately plotted as it thinks it is, but it’s nonetheless a well-made thriller.

Fuze Is Led By An All-Star Cast & David McKenzie’s ᴀssured Direction

Though sides are drawn early on, as Fuze untangles its various threads, the line between villain and hero blurs. On one side is Taylor-Johnson’s Tranter, a not-too-serious army man who is known for bucking against authority and doing things his own way. He pours a round of sH๏τs even before they defuse the bomb, anticipating his team’s eventual victory, whatever that may look like.

Fuze begins with Tranter and the rest of London’s police force (led by Mbatha-Raw’s formidable Zuzana) evacuating the blast area and securing the perimeter, but slowly expands outward to reveal a larger criminal conspiracy. Just when you think Fuze has it all laid out, Ben Hopkins’ script switches things up, introducing us to Karalis (James), a sharp-tongued bank robber with his own agenda.

Using the bomb as a cover for the heist and his cutting South African accent as a weapon against the grunts doing the dirty work, James is having a helluva good time playing a villain. Worthington is his right-hand man (or so it seems), but as the heist continues and the efforts to dismantle the bomb grow increasingly fraught, more questions come to the fore.

Is the bomb really from the Blitz? What is Karalis’s real agenda, and what was in the safe deposit box that he singled out? Fuze can be predictable as it answers these questions, and its plot becomes a bit convoluted. But that doesn’t make it any less exciting when the bomb is revealed as the distraction it was always meant to be.

McKenzie, perhaps best known for Hell or High Water, but who also premiered his last film Relay at TIFF, never lets Fuze settle for too long. Familiar dynamics, like that of the military group overseeing the bomb, are underscored by unpredictable ones. The true nature of the relationship between Karalis and the men who are helping him is the one that remains most unpredictable.

But that’s ultimately the trouble with Fuze — once the bank heist is introduced, the bomb plot loses its edge, the dynamics of the military team undermined by that of the shifty squad shaking down safe deposit boxes. This paranoia gives Fuze the energy it needs to push forward even as it becomes unwieldy. Thankfully, Fuze ultimately subverts endings typical of movies like this, landing on a note that is weirdly satisfying for how abnormal it feels.

Fuze may not reinvent the wheel, but sometimes all you need is a solid thriller with a H๏τ cast to really give a film the oomph it needs.

Fuze premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.