ReportWire

Tag: David Mackenzie

  • ‘Fuze’ Review: A Starry Cast Lends Only So Much Excitement to a Movie About a WW2 Bomb Unearthed in Central London

    [ad_1]

    What sets someone off? In the twisty, streaming-caliber thriller “Fuze,” that’s as much the question as whether the 500-pound bomb discovered in a London construction site might blow. If it does, the WW2-era explosive (presumably a relic of the Blitz) could wipe out several city blocks, which is why authorities swarm the area and evacuate all residents in the film’s opening minutes. Normally, that would be a recipe for some edge-of-your-seat action, although Ben Hopkins’ script makes clear early on that the bomb is just a distraction, while an even more sinister plot is ticking within the blast radius.

    If it weren’t for the film’s cast (or the grim seriosity of its director, David Mackenzie), “Fuze” might have been a complete dud. But “Hell or High Water” helmer Mackenzie treats the assignment like he’s the one saving lives, eschewing anything that might count as fun along the way. With his jaw clenched and sights set on being the next James Bond, Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays Major Will Tranter, a bomb disposal pro who’s both an ace sniper and a bit of a loose cannon, breaking protocol in his obsessive attempt to deactivate the vintage ordnance with minimal casualties.

    While Tranter’s poking around the deadly antique, a high-ranking police officer named Zuzana (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is focused on protecting the public. Mackenize singles out a Dari-speaking immigrant named Rahim (Elham Ehsas) and his elderly parents as the residents warily pour out of a nearby apartment building, knowing that audiences’ imaginations (and biases) will start to suggest how this character might relate to the bigger picture. Although several of the film’s surprises are predictable — usually just moments before the reversal comes — no one is likely to figure out Rahim’s connection to the bomb.

    One thing is sure: Movie stars don’t take roles in movies like “Fuze” unless they’re being offered something interesting to play, which means that the instant Theo James and Sam Worthington appear (or step from the shadows), our interest shifts from the bomb to whatever these two and their accomplices are up to. For nearly the first half of the film, composer Tony Doogan layers a steady synthetic heartbeat beneath the action, which gains little from this trick. If we’re invested, it’s because the cast telegraphs that these characters are important.

    James’s character talks with a South African accent and goes by the name Karalis, and though he comes across as a villain at first, it’s too early to say if that’s true. Karalis supplies his colleagues with fluorescent orange utility uniforms and stealthily leads them through the back door of the Bank Al Muraqabah, located just below Rahim’s building. While Tranter tinkers and Zuzana monitors the wall of local surveillance footage, Karalis and his team get to work drilling through the wall of the vault. Clearly, it’s no coincidence that they picked this moment to rob the bank. But what is their greater goal?

    Mackenzie’s a good director — good enough to make the sheer preposterous of this heist seem plausible — but he saves the thing that would make us root for these characters until the very end. Meanwhile, it’s not clear who’s side we’re meant to take, which complicates things once a scheme that couldn’t possibly have gone according to plan starts to unravel in unexpected and potentially upsetting ways. By this point, there are plot holes bigger than the one this bomb might tear in the London map.

    How did the bomb get to the building site? Who’s the bloke whose safety deposit box Karalis is after, and why isn’t he a character? Is Zuzana the only one trying to stop the scheme, and what kind of thriller is that, where you leave it to the criminals to eliminate one another? There’s an element of sleek, Jean-Pierre Melville-style efficiency to the operation, if not Michael Mann-level theatrics. “Fuze” shares the French director’s code of honor between men, no matter which side of the law they inhabit, as seen in films such as “The Red Circle” and “Army of Shadows.”

    Apart from one shocking death (when Tranter switches from neutralizing bombs up close to eliminating threats with his long-range rifle), the action is entertaining enough in the moment, but not especially memorable. The most explosive scene isn’t the one you expect, but the coda in which we learn why three characters are so unwaveringly loyal, when everyone else seems ready to double-cross each other at the first opportunity. It’s in that moment that the film’s fuze is set. Can Tranter or anyone stop it?

    [ad_2]

    Peter Debruge

    Source link

  • ‘Fuze’ Review: Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Theo James Headline David Mackenzie’s Savvy, Hunk-Filled Heist Thriller

    [ad_1]

    The opening credits of the heist thriller Fuze flicker and shake like action-movie credits used to do back in the good old Tony Scott days. That’s an early indication that the film, from director David Mackenzie and writer Ben Hopkins, has a clear sense of what tradition it wants to honor. The film prizes style, but has no higher ambition than to entertain, with an economy of means and no fussy pretension. That’s a noble mission, especially in this time of auteur worship, when so many genre movies seem determined to be something more.

    Mackenzie, the director behind sturdy films like Hell or High Water, keeps Fuze trotting along at a steady clip. It begins as a story of civic suspense: A London construction crew unwittingly digs up an unexploded bomb from the Blitz, similar to an event that really happened in Plymouth last year. It’s a compelling setup, connecting the sleek modernity of Fuze to a horror of the past. The clock ticks all too swiftly as the police and military work to clear the area and bring in a special team, led by an army major played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who will try to defuse the bomb.

    Fuze

    The Bottom Line

    Meat and potatoes, well-prepared.

    Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Gala Presentations)
    Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Theo James, Sam Worthington, Gugu Mbatha-Raw
    Director: David Mackenzie
    Writer: Ben Hopkins

    1 hour 38 minutes

    While they perform that bogglingly dangerous task, another series of events is unfolding beneath them. Theo James and Sam Worthington (this is a film admirably committed to the casting of hunks) are down in the basement of a suddenly abandoned building, surely up to no good. It soon becomes evident that they are using the distraction to stage a raid on a bank vault, up against their own ticking clock as they drill through brick and concrete. 

    The fun of this opening stretch is that we’re rooting for both groups to succeed, for London to be saved and for the thieves to get their hands on whatever they’re after. Mackenzie smoothly toggles between storylines, ratcheting up the tension and giving us quick but useful character sketches. 

    Fuze has a lively energy, a cool, daylit bravado that occasionally brings to mind Spike Lee’s Inside Man. Like that shrewd film, Fuze is more than first meets the eye. Before long, the two narratives have intertwined and the film rollicks away from its initial premise and into the realm of double-cross, job-gone-wrong crime caper. Some of the plot mechanics may strain credibility, but one does not come to a film like Fuze looking for docudrama. The internal logic of Hopkins’ busy script is sound enough to hold our attention as we try to suss out just who is zooming whom, and how. 

    Throughout, Giles Nuttgens’ cinematography is bright and crisp, holding the film in the glossy, liminal space between A-feature and B–movie. That’s a great place to be, one that used to be occupied by many studio films every year. Not so much in our streaming era, when there is a stark aesthetic divide between what makes it to theaters and the toss-off stuff that is designed to only ever exist in the digital bazaar of the internet. One hopes that an enterprising American distributor will give Fuze a go at multiplexes; it earns that distinction. 

    The actors are having fun, too. Taylor-Johnson is a convincingly intense and sweaty hotshot, while James gamely dons a South African accent to play a slimy operator who seems a step or two ahead of everyone else. Gugu Mbatha-Raw radiates steely competence as a policewoman overseeing things from a multi-screen control room—any movie of this ilk worth its salt needs that kind of omniscient observer. Worthington is perhaps a little underserved, but it’s always nice to see him outside the blue fugues of the Avatar films. 

    Mackenzie has now debuted two solid thrillers at Toronto in a row. So why not make that a new annual custom? Hampering the dream some is that Relay, which premiered here last year, didn’t do much business when it opened in the U.S. in late August. But maybe Fuze, with its more easily parsed and marketable premise, will break through. It’s not high art, but not everything ought to be. And anyway, riding the middle is its own tricky maneuver; it takes a lot of smarts to not overthink things. 

    [ad_2]

    Richard Lawson

    Source link