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From The Lavender Hill Mob and The League of Gentlemen to Sexy Beast and King of Thieves, a proper London heist thriller is hard to beat. Fuze, a new action-thriller from Hell or High Water director David MacKenzie, is the latest in that lineage: a hard-bitten gangster yarn with several stings in the tail.
Closing down swathes of the capital to film it, Fuze is an authentically London-feeling affair too, with sweaty, ticking-clock tension, high stakes, double crosses, and in the far background, dozens of Londoners wondering how the hell they’re going to get to the work what with all the gunmen and unexploded bombs. A highly relatable piece of escapist fun, in other words. Here’s how – and where – it came together.
What happens in Fuze?
Taking that old Passport to Pimlico idea of an unexploded Luftwaffe bomb sparking chaos in the capital, Fuze opens with the discovery of a piece of Nazi ordnance on a Paddington Basin building site. In a jiffy, bomb disposal expert Major Will Tranter (28 Years Later’s Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his team are on the scene with stethoscopes and steady nerves to assess the danger, as Chief Superintendent Zuzana Greenfield (Misbehaviour’s Gugu Mbatha-Raw) gives the order to evacuate residents within the potential blast radius.
Meanwhile, a group of thieves disguised as water engineers, including Theo James’s Karalis and Sam Worthington’s X, are setting to work with drills in a nearby basement, aiming to use the lockdown to pull off a daring heist before anyone’s any the wiser.
Where was Fuze filmed?
‘When I see London on film, often it looks a bit downbeat – it doesn’t have the qualities of New York or Paris,’ says director David MacKenzie, who was shooting in London for the first time with Fuze. ‘My intention was to avoid that because we wanted… a sense of scale.’
Sure enough, the film takes in bustling areas in west and northwest London, with road closures and a real-life lockdown of sorts required to pull off a believably deserted cityscape. ‘We needed to shut down sections of central London, which was no small feat,’ he adds. ‘It was essential to capture the unique character and energy of London to ground the film in a real, lived-in world.’
The rifle range scene is Barton MOD Firing Range in Cambridgeshire
The film opens with Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s veteran bomb disposal officer polishing up his sniping skills on an army rife range. Will those skills perhaps come in handy later in the film? Youbetcha.
The Paddington bomb site was filmed in Wembley
Standing in for the site of the unexploded bomb in Paddington Basin was a car park in Wembley. With Taylor Swift’s Eras residency at Wembley Stadium in full swing during filming in August 2024, the crew strained every sinew to avoid scaring the hell out of passing Swifties. ‘We had members of the public right outside where we were filming, so had to make sure that no one was going to get panicked,’ says supervising location manager Charlie Somers. ‘We had a lot of marshals and signage and people briefing the public on what was going on, so that the explosion didn’t give anyone a real scare.’
The police station was filmed at 55 Broadway in Westminster
The police situation room, complete with banks of monitors, was built at 55 Broadway, a popular filming location in a Westminster high-rise. Here, Chief Superintendent Greenfield and Sergeant Clareese Palmer (Honor Swinton Byrne) gradually realise that there’s more to the emergency than meets the eye. On hand to help ensure procedural authenticity was police advisor Nick Sloan, a UK law enforcement veteran.
The London lockdown was filmed on the Edgware Road
One of London’s key arteries finally gets its moment on screen in Fuze. ‘We chose the area around Edgware Road as it has a very multicultural vibe and has some modern and contemporary element,’ says MacKenzie of the movie’s key lockdown location. ‘The biggest challenge was convincing councils like Westminster and organisations like Transport for London that we could manage the shoot in a responsible manner,’ adds Somers, ‘whilst preventing too much disruption to normal London life. It took months of negotiations.’
The bank vault break-in was filmed in Bow
While the tumult unfolds outside and the streets quickly empty, Karalis and his gang get to work in a Paddington basement with an industrial drill. Those clammy scenes were filmed in a Bow warehouse.
The residents’ evacuation was filmed in Paddington
Local resident Rahim (Elham Ehsas) and his family are among the Paddington dwellers asked to vacate their homes and head for the safety of Hyde Park. The mini-exodus was filmed on Connaught Street and next to the Duke of Kendal pub. ‘[David] really wanted to have a sense of place,’ says Somers. ‘He wanted it to be around this area, with residents flowing into Hyde Park. We didn’t want to cheat that at another location outside of London.’
The farmhouse rendezvous was filmed at Stockers Farm in Rickmansworth
After making their getaway, the gang head to a remote farm outside of London where they meet their connections from London’s criminal underworld. The real farm, found in the Hertfordshire town of Rickmansworth, dates back to the 1700s and has also appeared in Downton Abbey, Midsomer Murders and Withnail and I.
The getaway and car chase scenes were filmed at Duxford Aerodrome and Windsor Great Park
More violent action unfolds as the robbers speed across the countryside after their initial rendezvous. Those scenes of high-speed pursuit and gun battles were filmed at IWM Duxford and Windsor Great Park.
The Afghanistan scenes were filmed at Wrotham Quarry in Kent
The movie flashes back to Tranter’s tour of duty in Afghanistan, where the veteran officer is caught up in an IED ambush. Rather than the mountains of Central Asia, these scenes were shot in the dusty surrounds of… Kent. Wrotham Quarry, which produces sand for the glass industry, stood in for the war zone.
Who stars in Fuze?
Headlining the movie are two hotly-tipped 007 prospects in Aaron Taylor-Johnson and The Gentleman’s Theo James as army veteran Major Will Tranter and armed robbery planner Karalis. Avatar’s Sam Worthington adds more star power as X, an unnamed member of the heist crew.
Belle’s Gugu Mbatha-Raw is Met Police boss Chief Superintendent Zuzana Greenfield, The Souvenir’s Honor Swinton Byrne plays a member of the Met Police’s response team and Top Boy’s Saffron Hocking is a soldier in Tranter’s squad.
When is Fuze out?
The movie is in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday April 3, and in US theatres from April 24.