Review of Fuzz (1972) by Donald W — 15 Feb 2014

This is movie is set in Boston in the early 1970's. It's a comedy but it tries to be realistic. That's hard to do when the plot involves a group of killers extorting money from the city by killing members of the city government.

If this were to happen for real it would be a major news story and the whole city would be shutdown till the criminals were caught. There are too many plot lines running through the movie that prevents the stars of the movie being on screen in much of the movie.

If you have Burt Reynolds and Raquel Welch in a movie in the 1970's, that's who you want to see on screen, not the supporting actors. The shows the technology the police were using in the 1970's.

There are old fashion switchboards and rotary telephones. They use big bulky two-way radios to long antennas. The mayor used punched card auto-dial machines to make phone calls. The painters try to steal a bunch of old manual type writers.

However they all looked like they came out of the 1940's. It would have been better if they had been using IBM electric typewriters from the 1960's. In 1970 those old manual typewriters would have been worthless.

In the background of the outdoor scenes there are real life scenes of Boston with cars from the 1960's and 1970's. The clothes are not trendy so if someone wore the same clothes today they wouldn't look out of place.

The movie is a mix of Dirty Harry and MASH. It tries but doesn't have any good jokes.