Popular reviews

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  Review by Josh Gillam ★★½

  Burt Reynolds, Raquel Welch and Tom Skerritt star in this action comedy following a group of detectives over a couple of days at their local precinct, each eventually attempting to track down a mysterious mad bomber who’s been threatening the city. 

  This police procedural plays out a bit like an early proof of concept for Hill Street Blues at first, a similar mix of lighter and darker tones in the stories making up a day-to-day look at this precinct. Similarly, mixing Reynolds and Welch with character actors like Skerritt, Jack Weston and Dan Frazer lets this jump around all kinds of different cases as it goes on, an early 70s grit that’s promising at first. 

  There’s a down-to-earth feel to…

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  Review by panos75 ★★

  The overworked detectives of Boston's 87th precinct are trying to solve a number of difficult cases: an extortionist who will kill members of the city's administration until his demands are met, a serial rapist on the loose, and a mysterious perpetrator who sets homeless people on fire.

  "Fuzz" is a classic example of a film with identity crisis. Ostensibly, it tries to be a comedic take on the gritty police dramas that were thriving back in the 70s (like "The French Connection" and "Dirty Harry"). The problem is though that it is neither very funny, nor very tense. I laughed only once despite the repeated jokes which are too obvious and forced to tickle the funny bone. The cases are…

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  Review by Michael501 📺 ★ 1

  1972 In Review - July
  #5

  Police in Boston search for a mad bomber trying to extort money from the city.

  Fuzz is attempt at bringing the irreverent anti-establishment comedy style drama of M*A*S*H to the police force, it totally fails and is a complete disaster.
  When you see a cast that includes Burt Reynolds, Yul Brynner, Jack Weston, Raquel Welch and Tom Skerrit plus it’s based on a book by Ed MacBain you would think that you would have something worth watching. Not here.
  The wacky humour is totally annoying, it feels so forced and not genuine, it’s compounded by having Burt Reynolds and Jack Weston dress up as nuns just to catch a criminal, the humour is so forced,…

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  Review by michele ❥ ★★★½

  “How would you sir like to be set on fire?”
  “I already tried that.”
  
  Both the trailer and movie poster had the impression that this would have been some sort of wacky and almost eccentric film, yet it isn’t. It fully embodies a fun and scuzzy 70’s Boston cop comedy but it’s more gritty than you’d expect. 

  This film acts more as a tv series than it does a movie or at least it had the potential to become a film franchise. There was just this lingering feeling that there was more story that could have been told. 

  Overall though this movie was actually much better than i anticipated it to be. I actually might have loved it if the…

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  Review by SpaghettiNoir ★★★

  An all-star '70s ensemble (Burt Reynolds, Rachel Welch, Tom Skerritt, and more I didn't spot before the credits) makes up the 87th Precinct of the Boston Police Department in this goofy cop comedy. A bit early Altman and a bit Pynchon-lite, especially in the first half before the plot takes over, leading up to a badass climax. Two bored, white Beantown kids lighting bums on fire to "clean up the neighborhood" checks out as a local pastime (see Marky Mark).

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  Review by Josh Lewis ★★★

  Veteran TV director Richard A. Colla (who had done episodes of Gunsmoke and The Virginian and would eventually do some Miami Vice and MacGyver) teams up with prolific and celebrated crime pulp novelist Ed McBain to adapt his 87th Precinct series into this oddball mix of violent 70s cop procedural and knockoff Altman ensemble comedy set inside a farcically chaotic precinct with various detectives walking in and out of rooms handling strange cases that all eventually converge. Burt Reynolds is top-billed as the cop going undercover investigating some punks setting homeless people on fire and doing bad-cop interrogations while disguised as a nun, Raquel Welch is the new transfer looking into a series of bizarre sexual assaults, meanwhile Tom Skerritt,…

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  Review by mosquitodragon ★★★½

  Fuzz feels like an untarnished relic of its time. Today it is underseen, a bit underloved and definitely not the slightest bit like the film suggested by its own poster. Even so, I'm a little surprised at the disdain in which this is held by those who have seen it.

  It seems to have marketed itself as a Burt Reynolds / Raquel Welch film, and although they are both in it, they just blend in with the crowd here. This is much more like a Robert Altman ensemble piece - a slice-of-life, fly-on-the-wall scattered narrative with no real protagonist and lots of seemingly unrelated storylines which get half-heartedly tied together at the end - kinda. Director Richard A Colla was…

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★

  Pretty tonally faithful to the 87th Precinct books (no surprise given that McBain wrote the script), but this doesn't really get the time give the characters and institutional satire much breathing room and the main mad-bomber plot consequently seems like a second procedural movie tacked onto a sardonic comedy.

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  Review by C.A. DeStefanis ★★★½ 2

  Kinda loved this. It can be silly, but it was the exact right amount for me.

  Gotta love a film where the heroes are fallible and despite all their efforts the central conflict just sort of works itself out in the end. It started out feeling like a bit of a hang out film before laying out the multiple crime threads that make up the plot. My mother reads the book series this was based upon and after seeing Fuzz I may have to take a look as well.

  You'd think this was a Burt Reynolds star vehicle but he is very much part of a killer ensemble of big names and "that guy" character actors. My only note would be, if you have a movie starring Burt Reynolds, don't name one of the co-lead characters Bert. It's very distracting.

  I had a lot of fun with this one.

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  Review by AJ ★★★½ 2

  Jack Weston and Burt Reynolds going good cop bad cop while they’re dressed as nuns is as fantastic as it sounds. 

  Looks like a lot of people came in expecting something different which would make sense seeing the poster or hearing the names Raquel Welch and Burt Reynolds. I genuinely enjoyed the ensemble nature of it, and, surprisingly, the sitcomyness of the first 30-45 minutes. 

  Burt Reynolds #6

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  Review by Luke Thorne ★

  Burt Reynolds, Yul Brynner, Raquel Welch, Tom Skerritt and Jack Weston star in Richard A. Colla’s violent action comedy about a mad bomber attempting to extort cash from a rich man.

  Adapted from the novel of the same name by Ed McBain, which was published four years earlier, the story concerns Boston sleuths Steve Carella (Burt Reynolds) and Meyer Meyer (Jack Weston) who are on the case of a perplexing crime lord known only as Deaf Man (Yul Brynner), disreputable for attacking local politicians.

  Along with co-workers Bert Kling (Tom Skerritt) and Eileen McHenry (Raquel Welch), the team are forced to stop Deaf Man from future attacks while keeping quiet on the highways of the area – which turns out…

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  Review by Keith G ★★½

  The Movember 2021 Challenge #2

  So we have a film called Fuzz starring Burt Reynolds and Tom Skerritt...a perfect motastic film for my challenge! Actually though there is disappointment because this is pre moustache Skerritt...the first sighting of the hairy caterpillar must have been a few years later with The Devils Rain...unfortunately here his top lip is as smooth as a baby's bum.
  That aside this comedy thriller set in an apple green coloured Boston Police Precinct has its moments but is tonally a bit skewed. Striving for that Joseph Wambaugh/Ed McBain feel, it never quite manages to balance its darker gritty ideas with the comedy which is too silly for its own good. For instance one scene has park…