Review: Hot Fuzz

PLOT:
Nicholas
Angel (Simon Pegg) is the best cop in

London

. His arrest record is 400%
higher than everyone else on the force, in other words, he makes
everyone else look really bad. For
this, Nick’s superiors decide he would be better suited for the
lovely town of

Sandford

, a nice quite town where nothing ever happens.
When Nick attempts to adjust to his new life, a series of
brutal “accidents” plague the town.
He soon joins forces with his dim partner, Danny Butterman
(Nick Frost) to find out some small town secrets and hilarity and
heavy duty action ensues.

CRITIQUE:
Watching
the new film from Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg, the creators of SHAUN
OF THE DEAD (!!), one thing came to my mind… I felt like a kid in
a candy store. You go inside,
you look around and you are surrounded by every sweet treat
imaginable. That is what HOT
FUZZ; a flick that has everything, from incredible action to
wonderfully witty dialogue and even a bit of horror and gore to top
it off. All these wonderful
treats, with slick camera work, exciting and unique characters, it
all makes for a bloody good time that I am still thinking about days
after.

Edgar
Wright is one of the best comedic directors around because he
doesn’t play it safe. He
experiments and attempts to create a world where even the most
miniscule things seem massive. Whether
it be flushing the toilet or finding a runaway swan on the road.
He has an uncanny ability to take tired ideas and make them
fresh and interesting. He did
this with SHAUN and now he takes a stab at the action genre.
Specifically, movies like POINT BREAK and BAD BOYS 2 (really
funny stuff), and enlivens it with some of the most clever dialogue
around. This is the kind of
movie that makes it a blast going to the theatre.
It’s fun and it doesn’t insult your intelligence.

Simon
Pegg and Nick Frost are once again fantastic, only this time they
take on a different kind of relationship.
This is not your atypical action team; they encompass many of
the clichéd couplings in this type of movie but in an exciting and
funny way. I appreciated that they did not play Shaun and Ed again.
Simon is spot on as Nicholas Angel, the best cop in

London

. And Nick, as his childlike
partner, gives warmth and laugh out loud humor to the role.
The dialogue they share is terrific thanks to a refreshingly
funny script by Pegg and Wright.

Also
hamming it up is ex-Bond, Timothy Dalton.
He has never been better than this.
His “is he or isn’t he” bad guy, Simon Skinner is one
of the brightest spots in the movie. And
that’s saying a whole hell of a lot; all the performances here are
right on. The many BBC folk
give rich comedic performances. It’s
a blast to see Jim Broadbent and Edward Woodward among others.
And Bill Nighy is back in a hilarious cameo that all Dead
fans will enjoy.

Aside
from a top notch cast, HOT FUZZ is an action movie with explosions,
car chases and some bad ass fight sequences.
It’s a comedy with a superb script that includes swans,
ketchup and stuffed monkeys. It’s
also a horror film with a psycho killer on the loose.
Which makes for a surprisingly ample amount of gore…
seriously, they don’t skimp on the red stuff.
There is so much here to love and to top it all off, it’s
loaded with surprises (which would be a disservice to give away too
much).

It
could have been a typical cop spoof with predictable jokes and flat
uninteresting characters, but on every level, the FUZZ surpasses all
expectations. So if you are
like me, and have a sweet tooth for an action comedy that has a
little bit of everything, and then some… look no further as Simon,
Edgar and the gang continue to make fantastic entertainment.
This is one candy shop that I plan on visiting again and
again.

—
10/10