Aris (Apostolis Totsikas) is just a delivery man–but he’s good at it. One day he’s kidnapped and has a bomb strapped to his chest, and now he’s at the mercy of a deranged man who provides him with seemingly impossible tasks. The bomb strapped to Aris’ chest has a Short Fuse, and the time that Aris has to solve this convoluted mystery is running out.
Short Fuse happens to be one of the films that is difficult to write about–because, even though so much happens throughout the course of the film, it feels that it’s at a standstill throughout as well. Aris is dragged through hell from the opening minutes of the film, but each and every thing that he experiences throughout the film fails to hold serious weight, and the intendedly-dramatic moments fail to live up to expectations. As this mysterious journey ensues, the action never ramps up as I had hoped, the acting fails to provide anything significant to the film or its narrative, and the storyline is ultimately derivative of so many things that have come before.
The action present in Short Fuse, for the most part, is rather uninspired–often incapable of really bringing emotion to the forefront of the film. It often feels as if the actors are going through the motions rather than actually doing anything with purpose–and to be honest, that’s infuriating. The reality is that this is the case with just about everything–nothing stands out to me other than the fact that nothing stands out to me, and it’s not something that I can look past.
Short Fuse relies heavily on coincidence in order to drive the story forward–and while that can be an effective device that allows massive films to come to life, it just doesn’t work here. Everytime something happened throughout the course of Short Fuse I found myself thinking “of course,” once again reminded of the mediocrity of the film. These moments, like the rest of the film, fail to inspire, fail to get the heart racing–the only thing they do is cause viewers to roll their eyes and wonder how much longer the film is.
I can’t get past the simplicity of Short Fuse, as it’s effectively a pretty cliche film all the way around. With that, everything that this team put into the film, every bit of passion thrown in the direction of Short Fuse appears to be all for naught–as the finished product is ultimately forgettable. It became difficult to review the film as a result of it being so simple, so incapable of evoking emotion or bringing any sort of excitement to life. Short Fuse ultimately exists somewhere in no man’s land–in a place where not many people will find it and (many of) the ones that do will soon forget it exists. And, weirdly enough, with all of the negatives that I expressed regarding this film, the reality is that it will certainly appeal to some viewers. It has all the makings of those cheesy Van Damme flicks from years past, and it will likely have the ability to reach viewers who are a fan of mindless action films. Short Fuse may just find an audience that likes it, but it’s far from what I’d call entertaining.
Directed by Andreas Lampropoulos & Kostas Skiftas.
Written by Konstantinos Moutsinas & Kostas Skiftas.
Starring Apostolis Totsikas, Tasos Nousias, Evgenia Dimitropoulou, Constantine Markoulakis, Thodoris Atheridis, etc.
⭐⭐⭐⭐/10
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