Movie Review: FUZE

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: April 24th, 2026 / 12:16 PM

FUZE movie poster | ©2026 Roadside Attractions/Saban Films

Rating: R
Stars: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Theo James, Saffron Hocking, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Elham Ehsas, Sam Worthington, Alexander Arnold
Writer: Ben Hopkins
Director: David Mackenzie
Distributor: Roadside Attractions/Saban Films
Release Date: April 24, 2026

FUZE is what might be termed a what’s-going-on-here thriller that is so intent on its own complexities that it obscures its throughlines.

Directed by David Mackenzie from Ben Hopkins’s script, FUZE begins at a construction site in London. All work abruptly stops when the construction crew realize they’ve partly unearthed an unexploded WWII-era bomb that is large enough to crater the whole neighborhood if it goes off.

The police and military are immediately notified. On the civilian side, Superintendent Zuzana Greenfield (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is in charge. Major Will Tranter (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) commands the British Army bomb defusal squad. The cops evacuate all residents and workers from the potential blast radius, while Tranter and his team do their best to keep the ordnance from detonating.

At the same time, a quintet of criminals, led by Karalis (Theo James) and X (Sam Worthington), use the opportunity to drill through the wall of an apartment. This is normally the home of refugee Rahim (Elham Elsas) and his worried elderly parents, but it’s empty during the emergency.

The immediate issue is whether Tranter and company will be able to prevent the bomb from blowing up a giant chunk of London. The question beyond that is how the robbers correctly anticipated that their target and its surroundings would be free of people at that specific time, which leads us to wonder (as intended) what the thieves have to do with the bomb.

We get answers over the course of FUZE, which toggles back and forth between the Army, the police and the heist.

Hopkins’s screenplay has tight, dense plotting. However, there is so much material to cram in there that most of the characters don’t get a chance to express much individuality. We can’t tell who is important or why we should care about what they’re doing, apart from not wanting a mass casualty explosion to occur.

As a result, we’re not especially invested as events grow more complex. An end sequence set ten years before the main action feels like it should have opened the movie. It would have shaved off some mystery but would also have made us better disposed toward the individuals who turn out to be the protagonists.

Instead, we wind up sympathizing primarily with dutiful young corporal Martin Hansen (Alexander Arnold, smart and emotive), who is uncommonly brave and observant. We also identify with Mbatha-Raw’s well-played if underwritten increasingly exasperated police official.

FUZE has decent brain-teasers and some good UXB tension. But because we see the characters at such a remove, we are never fully drawn into whether they live or die, much less whether they fail or succeed.

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