My quick rating –  6.3/10. David Mackenzie‘s Fuze starts with a surprisingly cool drone shot sweeping over a busy construction site in the heart of London. Everything looks routine until the workers dig up something that absolutely nobody wants to find buried beneath a major city. An unexploded WWII bomb. Suddenly, what was shaping up to be a normal workday turns into a migraine for just about everyone involved.

They report the discovery to Zuzana, played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who recognizes the device as UXO (Unexploded Ordnance) right away. The city grinds to a halt, while the police and military rush to evacuate everyone. Time is ticking down. Enter Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Will, the bomb disposal expert. Yes, Kraven and maybe even the next James Bond. He keeps the tension high alongside Zuzana, both doing excellent in their roles.

Fuze does an awesome job showing London during evacuations. Packed streets full of people and cars gradually become eerie and empty. This creates a fantastic atmosphere, making the situation feel incredibly real and vast. For a while, it seems the movie will be entirely focused on the bomb-disposal operation.

Then the guys in orange jumpsuits show up.

While the military crew follows protocol, trying to prevent half of London from becoming a very expensive crater, another group decides this would be the perfect opportunity to conduct a heist. Not sure if these thieves spend their free time sitting around waiting for unexploded bombs to be discovered, but judging by the generator hidden in a garbage bin and the amount of equipment already in place, this definitely wasn’t a last-minute plan. These guys looked prepared enough to have a PowerPoint presentation ready.

Surprise! They’re after a vault full of safety deposit boxes. And the heist itself is surprisingly well thought out. The only slight flaw in their master plan seems to be forgetting that London is one of the most heavily surveilled cities on the planet. Small oversight.

Before I strained my neck shaking my head, it doesn’t settle for being just another robbery movie. There are plenty of double-crosses, shifting loyalties, and backstabbing along the way that set it apart. The final act takes a few turns I wasn’t expecting, and the ending itself is handled in a fairly unique way.

Fuze ended up being a pleasant surprise. I was expecting a fairly generic premise, but it finds some creative ways to spruce it up. The story is well designed, the pacing is excellent, and at just 96 minutes it never wastes time sitting on scenes longer than necessary. The editing keeps everything moving, making the runtime fly by.

An entertaining thriller with a clever setup, solid performances, and enough twists to keep you guessing. Definitely worth checking out.