3/12 ForReel Score | 1.5/5 Stars

A journeyman filmmaker can coast on one outstanding credit for a fascinating amount of time. I have enthusiastically sought out all of director David Mackenzie’s underwhelming follow ups to his stirring 2016 neo western Hell Or High Water. As time goes on, I become less sure as to why. Outlaw King and Relay were certainly serviceable genre movies, but Mackenzie’s screenwriting on those projects lacked the grit and soul that Taylor Sheridan brought to their collaboration. Unfortunately, Sheridan is now too busy running a massive conservative television universe to slum it with the journeyman filmmakers he used to throw scripts to. While digging for scraps, Mackenzie has unfortunately stumbled upon Ben Hopkins’ (Inside) screenplay for Fuze. This inert Tony Scott knock-off postures at suspense before quickly becoming boring enough to make us wonder if a high caliber explosion in this particular area would be much of a loss at all.

We follow Iraq veteran Major Will Tranter (Aaron Taylor Johnson) as he is called in to assist with a distressing situation. A construction crew has unearthed a World War II era bomb on site and it seems to be ticking. We’re right in the center of town, so if it goes off, hundreds of people could be killed and homes would be destroyed. While Will and his superiors are running around like beheaded chickens trying to figure this out, an elaborate heist plays out beneath their feet. Karalis (Theo James), X (Sam Worthington) and a couple of other crew members have burrowed underground to steal diamonds from deposit boxes while all of law enforcement is distracted. Could these two seemingly unrelated crises be connected somehow? You won’t care by the time you find out.

This is just not a very interesting situation on any front. We’re either watching Will bark orders at his subordinates while futzing around with the bomb or squabbles amongst a generic group of criminals carrying out an ordinary heist. Mackenzie directs it with the plain, stoic tonality of an F.B.I. episode and his cast follows suit. Aaron Taylor Johnson can be quite a lively scenery chewer in movies like Nosferatu or 28 Years Later. Every so often he decides that he has to scowl his way through some militaristic nonsense like Fuze or The Wall to show that he’s not that dweeby teen from Kick-Ass anymore. He’s a real gritty, rough and tough action star. Okay, buddy. He’s perfectly serviceable here but this stressful situation doesn’t drive this character into taking any particularly dynamic action. There’s nothing for Johnson to play with. The closest we get to him having a human interaction are his exchanges with Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who is trapped in a thankless role as his superior officer. She’s mostly there to explain to the audience where we’re at with the detonation and to react gravely to the very few things that do happen.

The crew of outlaws is only marginally more exciting. Karalis is playing multiple sides and Theo James does a decent job playing a guy who is totally in over his head. Nothing particularly dynamic, but it is more exciting to watch him try to slither out of trouble than another scene of Taylor-Johnson scowling at the bomb. Worthington barely gets the time of day. He’s just there to bark out lines that your AI companion in an Xbox 360 third person shooter might to keep the level moving along. Nothing about their caper or their escape is anything remotely creative. This film isn’t inspired by a true story and yet you can feel it continuously dodging any idea that would be remotely fanciful or fun in the name of realism, I suppose.

Sometimes network TV episodes escape containment and become substandard action flicks like Fuze. Absolutely nothing about this is theatrical enough to warrant grabbing the remote let alone leaving the house. It is so poised and determined to not interrogate its characters that even a potentially terrifying central scenario feels like another day at work. It all comes together for a twist that not only feels obvious but promises a story that could’ve been far more layered had it just laid its cards on the table earlier. At this point, David Mackenzie should just take a studio picture. His instincts for which indie thrillers will pop are dire.

Movie Review: "Fuze" Fizzles Out