So there’s a new British heist movie titled Fuze—quite a thrill ride, complete with complicated plot, excellent cast, and a mess of techno-gadgets. Set in London, it showcases U.K.’s impressive (albeit fictional) city-services people, from police to military bomb-detonation experts to traffic coordinators and more. That city-services orientation reminded me of the classic crime thriller The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974), which starred Robert Shaw of Jaws (1975) fame. It’s one of the movies that defines the Seventies image of New York City, and Fuze does the same thing for London in the 2020s.
Fuze stars Theo James, the hunky Brit who made a splash as a philandering husband in Season Two of the HBO series White Lotus. He plays Karalis, a slippery eel criminal who always seems two steps ahead of everyone else, or just incredibly lucky. He’s good. Or good at being bad. There’s a backstory that arrives at the film’s end that suggests some motivation and redemption for his character, even if all the other bad dudes he betrayed still want him dead. The military bomb-detonation expert Will, played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, is a key figure who turns the tables on the criminals more than once.
Like The Taking of Pelham One Two Three it’s a white-knuckled joy ride through danger and peril. An unexploded WWII era bomb is discovered at a construction site in the center of London. The area is evacuated and the bomb squad called in. Meanwhile a group of thieves hiding in a nearby apartment building drill through a basement wall into a bank vault and steal diamonds worth reportedly $30 million. But something goes wrong. A chase ensues, as in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. The outcome, however, is different. The ending calls to mind that other classic of New York City cinema in the Seventies, The French Connection (1971)—which, oddly enough, stars Roy Scheider, also a star of Jaws.
