Fuzz

This is billed as a Burt Reynold's vehicle but he is actually part of a great cast in this Ed McBain 87th Precinct comedy-thriller. The police in Boston are searching for an extortionist dubbed "The Deaf Man" who is demanding cash or he kills a high ranking city official. Reynolds along with Tom Skeritt and Jack Weston are the cops on the case. The film really has a great ensemble feel and, I hope, accurately predicts the goings on inside a police station. Raquel Welch co-stars as a female detective out to snag a rapist. Yul Brynner, who must have been having lots of fun at this point in his career, is "The Deaf Man." His screen time is minimal but he does a good job. Familiar faces pop up in nearly every other scene with guys like Charles Tyner, Albert Popwell, Tamara Dobson and a very young Charles Martin Smith in small roles. The film's only major problem is that it neatly wraps up everything in the end. Seriously, every crime the cops are investigating is solved in one scene that relies heavily on convenience.

After reading several bad reviews of this film I was almost afraid to watch it. I hate wasting my time on bad movies, but I decided based on the cast to give it a go and I'm glad I did. The movie is not a fast paced comedy by any stretch of the imagination. It is instead, like many movies from it's time, a slow moving style of film along the lines of The Big Fix. It keeps your interest because the characters are interesting. It makes you laugh at times and actually has a little suspense mixed into a story that seems disjointed at first, but ties together so well in the end it makes the whole movie work.

The plot centers partially around a bombers scheme to blackmail the city of Boston, but more so around the police precinct he chooses to contact with his threats. We see a group of officers trying to get through their daily routine as they work on several cases at once. Focusing on the bomber but still trying to deal with a myriad of other problems that present themselves as they try to solve other crimes. It presents itself as more of a "day in the life" type movie rather than a film with one main focus. It's well acted, well told and is a good movie for those times when you really want to just relax and get into a story. Sure it has a few weak spots as with most movies but it is certainly worth putting on and I'm very glad I had the chance to see it.

In short, if your looking for Starskey & Hutch 2005, this isn't it. If your looking for a slow paced intelligent movie, don't let bad reviews chase you away and give this film a shot.

With the last shot leaving very much in doubt whether the crime wave that has struck the 87th precinct is truly over, my guess is that the producers were anticipating a Fuzz 2. The need for one never arose however.

A very good group of players just can't quite get this film to come together. Fuzz reminds me of a Police Academy film with two many pretensions. In fact the Boston PD may just be where those Academy graduates end up.

The main plot of the film involves a master criminal, the Deaf Man played by Yul Brynner who is blackmailing the city of Boston so he won't kill any of their top officials. He calls his threat into the precinct with detectives Burt Reynolds, Tom Skerritt, Jack Weston, and Raquel Welch are working. When they don't believe him, Brynner kills a couple of city officials to make his point.

A couple of other story lines involving a search for some punks setting homeless on fire and a rapist and somehow and through some Clousseau like luck this crowd actually solves all the cases. You have to see the film to see how they do it.

Best scenes are Raquel and Skerritt in a sleeping bag while on stakeout with Skerritt getting terribly distracted and Reynolds and Weston as nuns observing them and a possible perpetrator. That's for the main cast members, but when painters Gino Conforti and Gerald Hiken who are busy painting the precinct while all this is going steal the film whenever they're on screen. In fact in the old days some studio would have teamed these two permanently for a series of films.

Fuzz is the harbinger of Police Academy films to come.

Based on the same characters as the early 60s TV series 87th PRECINCT that starred Robert Lansing, Norman Fell, Gena Rowlands and others. The TV series was based in New York City but here the 87th Precinct is in Boston (though no one has a Boston accent).

Burt Reynolds stars in this ensemble comedy/drama about a mad bomber trying to extort money from a wealthy man. It's an uneasy mix of comedy and drama especially when people start getting blown up. The cops also come off as a bunch of really stupid oafs without any common sense at all.

Reynolds plays the same character Lansing played on TV. Raquel Welch shows up as a cop and is totally miscast and unbelievable, though to be fair, it's a badly written role. Other cops include Jack Weston, Tom Skerritt, James McEachin, Steve Ihnat, Dan Frazer, and others. Gino Conforti and Gerald Hiken plays i for laughs as a copy of wisecracking painters assigned to re-do the squad room. And Neile Adams shows up for one scene as Reynolds' deaf wife (the Rowlands part on TV).

The bad guys are headed by Yul Brynner as a hearing-impaired maniac and Don Gordon and Peter Bonerz as his main stooges. There's also a couple of kids played by Charles Martin Smith and Gary Morgan who run around torching drunks (a real barrel of laughs).

Nothing quite works and the film makes Boston look like a burned out slum.

I was expecting a decent police drama out of the movie "Fuzz." With the talents of Burt Reynolds, Yul Brynner, and Raquel Welsh, viewers would anticipate a memorable picture. But considering the acting talent involved, the film is a near disaster with several plot-holes and mood changes in scenes and story lines that confuse, alienate, and annoy the viewer.

To the best that I can make out (as I was half-asleep waiting for anything to happen in this picture) Yul Brynner plays a deaf man who has orchestrated the assassination of several high ranking political officials and other selected targets. Bert Reynolds and Jack Weston are the cops who dress up as Nuns. ("NUNS?") to try to stop them, against a backdrop of a discombobulated police station and staff that makes Barney Fife look like an organized lawman! What a mess! There is absolutely no continuity to this film or plot development. You would think that some of the random shooting events would place an element of dramatic suspense, giving the viewers some reason to see this picture. However, in the next scene it's a comedy, than in the following scene it turns serious again. Fuzz is a perfect example of a movie that is only removed from being a 1, because I have given an extra point to the recognition of the actors, and another point for perhaps two good scenes that I liked in the whole movie. However, that's it. Fuzz in my judgment scores a VERY GENEROUS 3.

If the script would have stuck to ONE quality serious element, with concern about a strong issue from the cast, Fuzz could have been a passable police film. However, with too much going on at once, a weak and extremely confusing script, and a picture who's writers look like they crammed material from at least three different movies into this one, Fuzz is extremely fuzzy and never comes into focus.