TIFF 2025: Fuze Review

This will be one of many reviews during this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, to keep up with our latest coverage, click here.

A construction site in London discovers an undetonated WWII bomb while excavating, accompanied by a punctual evacuation of the borough and a swiftly deployed military defusal team led by Major Will Tranter (Taylor-Johnson). Coinciding with this life-threatening crisis is a brazen group of bank robbers, including Karalis (James) and X (Sam Worthington), looking to take advantage while the surrounding region is completely abandoned. Director David Mackenzie imbues his latest film, Fuze, with his familiar, stylistically grounded approach without dramatizing the stressful situations on screen. 

Mackenzie balances a tempered engagement to these concurrent stories, necessary by the detailed planning and professionalism that comes with performing in these high-pressure situations. Will’s comprehensive capabilities to adapt to the crucial moments of this grave situation with the robbers’ meticulous preparation behind their plundering, extraction, and escape, provide a riveting double experience to this pulpy story. Effectively combining two films into one alternating story, Mackenzie never allows one dire situation to overshadow the other until it imperatively collides in volatile fashion.

Confidently led by Taylor-Johnson and James, their portrayals of diligent, determined leaders in these differing stories amplifies this grounded heist thriller without crossing into pretentiousness. Elevated with the unexpected twists and turns running through the heart of London, their unwavering assertiveness throughout the constant oncoming adversity masks any suspicions that audiences may have about this potentially explosive conspiracy at play. Though questionable flashbacks and jarring visual effects riddle the film’s key moments with muddled reveals, Fuze is still a largely captivating theater experience that never takes itself too seriously.

Nearly a decade following the critically acclaimed and award-nominated Hell or High Water, Mackenzie’s focus on more grounded, pulpy crime thrillers like Fuze and Relay – both premiering at the festival – is a welcoming pivot to engaging, adrenaline-fueled stories that excellently encapsulate the entertaining theater experience. Fusing together a time-sensitive bomb disposal crisis and a meticulously coordinated bank heist, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Theo James lead both stories with unwavering gravitas that masks audiences’ expectations of the film’s imminent twists and turns.

still courtesy of VVS Films

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Costa Christoulas

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