Les poulets

If one goes to the movies a lot, it is often a bit more interesting when one has read the original work first. Ed McBain was also known as mystery writer Evan Hunter when he wrote the first of many stories surrounding his famous 87th Precinct. The series centered mostly around the reoccurring characters in his Police Station. This compilation series became the basis for the Hollywood movie called " Fuzz. " In the film, Burt Reynolds plays Det. Steve Carella, Jack Weston is Det. Meyer Meyer while Tom Skerritt plays Det. Bert Kling. With the arrival of newcomer Det. Eileen McHenry (Raquel Welch) the precinct sets out to solve a trio of baffling crimes. Formost in their sights is the mad bomber (Yul Brynner) out to extort millions from high city officials by threatening to kill them if they don't pay up. Although there is a serious attempt to convey real police drama concerning juvenile assaults, multiple arson and serial rape, the comic atmosphere and jovial levity, renders all efforts moot. Interestingly, the drama was attempted, but the end result proved more humorous than serious, rendering the movie a silly exercise with no solid resolutions. The surprising appearances of Albert Popwell as Lewis and Yul Brenner as a heavy, meant it was not a total loss. ***

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.

The film's poster indicates that Fuzz is a raucous Burt Reynolds vehicle. When it is a gritty ensemble piece that mixes slapstick, comedy and crime drama.

Based on Ed McBain's 87th Precinct. The screenplay is written by McBain using his real name and it has criss crossing storylines featuring the cops from 87th Precinct relocated to Boston.

Detective Steve Carella (Reynolds) is posing as an homeless man as someone is setting the local bums on fire. Detective Eileen McHenry (Raquel Welch) is a specialist transferred to the precinct to deal with rape crimes.

There is an extortionists known as the Deaf Man (Yul Brynner) who calls the police station making demands for money. If his demands are not met, he will kill a city official.

The Deaf Man has targeted the station because the cops are inept. Some of them cops are irritated by the wisecracking decorators sent by the city's maintenance department.

I expected Fuzz to be more like the French Connection with Reynolds as the main lead. It ends up more like MASH. An uneven hybrid of genres. It is a good but patchy film.

The film's conclusion is a messy series of coincidences.

Somehow it is also ahead of its time anticipating television dramas like Hill Street Blues that would arrive by the early 1980s.

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.