Hot Fuzz
With an arrest record that is 400% higher than any other cop, Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) is easily London’s finest. He is so good in fact that he makes everyone else on the force look bad, so as a way to deal with him his superiors ship him off to the rural village of Sandford. Once there he is partnered up with hardcore action film fanatic Danny Butterman (Nick Frost). Butterman spends all his time watching movies like Point Break and Bad Boys II, just hoping to one day have the chance to fly through the air firing two guns at once. As it is the closest thing he’s got is Angel. The two of them spend most of their time dealing with missing farm animals and loiterers, that is until the townsfolk start turning up dead. To everyone else they appear to be accidents, but Angel knows better. When he starts to look a little closer at his quiet new home he sees that it’s full of lust, bribery, dark arts and murder.
I don’t know how many more genres Edgar Wright can mine along with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, but if they do I’ll be on board. Pegg and Frost play off each other superbly, but as good of a comic duo as they are, it really is the supporting cast that makes Hot Fuzz as good as it is, particularly Timothy Dalton. As Sandford’s local grocer, every time he’s on screen he says the most menacing things possible. He appears guilty from the start and even the music playing on his car radio seems to say so.
As a kid who grew up with only five channels, I watched a lot of PBS and have a sort of affinity for bad British comedies like The Vicar Dibley that take place in some rural village where everyone is a bit bizarre. The first part of this film deals more with what it’s like to be a super cop in a town where the biggest event is a swan on the loose. When the town’s true nature comes to light, the whole film completely shifts gears. Instead of being about a bunch of quirky townsfolk the whole thing becomes a full on action farce. It just becomes a non stop barrage of action and action movie clichés.
What’s great about the action in Hot Fuzz is that it’s almost played straight. Instead of going for the Leslie Nielson Naked Gun cartoony violence, they do it straight up Michael Bay style. Everything is in slow motion with mood lighting, fire comes pouring from the barrels of guns and catchphrases fly faster than bullets. They even capture the full on man love that movies like Point Break are loaded with. There isn’t a sincere moment in this film.
As general rule any time a comedy starts to go over an hour and fourty-five minutes it’s on borrowed time. You have to really be hitting your marks to support that length, but fortunately Hot Fuzz does so. By mining comedy in multiple sources the laughs are able to continue without the film ever wearing out its welcome. If you like Shaun of the Dead and have ever seen an amped up action flick you have to check this out.
The Grade
- Story: A-
- Acting: B+
- Visuals: B+
- Originality: A
- Enjoyability: A
- Overall: A-
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