Hot Fuzz – B+
Nick Frost and Simon Pegg’s new action comedy is perhaps not as spot on as Shaun of the Dead, but it is still a well-shot, hilarious comedy with many hilarious moments. The setup is that Nicholas Angel, London’s finest cop gets transferred to the quiet country village of Sandford. There his work as an officer is challenged by the complete lack of any crime…for a while. As soon as strange, grisly murders start happening and the entire town passes them off as mere accidents, Angel and his sidekick Danny to save the day.
This movie had me laughing within two minutes. There really is just one great gag after another. Simon Pegg’s face alone makes me laugh, so I guess it didn’t take much. A lot of the laughs come from the film’s brilliant editing which is so overdramatic it is ridiculous. The trippy montage where Sgt. Angel rides the bus to Sandford had me in stitches. The film continues into a great cast of characters including Jim Broadbent as the kindly police commissioner and the two wise-cracking inspectors Andy and Andy (played wonderfully by Paddy Considine and Rafe Spall), and there’s the stereotypical sexually bold female officer whose every line contains some sort of innuendo and a sinister grocery store manager played by one-time Bond Timothy Dalton. There is some startlingly grisly violence that seems part Monty Python, part horror film. It’s pretty gross, but that’s what I expected from Pegg and Frost; it’s one of their trademarks.
The plot may be where this movie was less tight than Shaun of the Dead. It starts out as a fish-out-of water story (big city cop in the country), then progresses into an Agatha Christie sort of whodunit, then ends in a brilliant Bad Boys-esque shootout. Not that there’s anything wrong with genre-mixing, but I didn’t quite get why. I thought the film was going to be a spoof tribute to over-the-top action flicks, but it really is a lot more. I guess there’s nothing wrong with it, it just feels unfocused at times. Plus, the plot takes a long time to develop. The movie keeps you laughing, but I felt like it could’ve been shortened. As it is, the entire film is worth it for the last 30 minutes in which the good guys and bad guys whip out their guns and start unloading on each other in a perfectly shot tribute to Bad Boys or Commando. It’s over the top and brilliant, every line is perfect as the characters hash through the action film script structure. The two Andys become the wisecracking sidekicks, the female cop becomes the badass girl, Danny becomes Martin Lawrence to Angel’s Will Smith and then they all just start shooting. Some shots are just priceless, like a ground shot looking up at Frost and Pegg in full battle armor as a big helicopter flies over in slow motion. Pegg also gets a great scene fully clad with ammo and weapons riding into town on a horse, a completely ridiculous and very funny image.
Hot Fuzz is a lot of things, but mainly a tribute to 80s action cinema. It’s over the top and ultimately very funny. Frost, Pegg and director Edgar Wright are smart filmmakers who like to make punchy action comedies that satisfy on multiple levels. You get great british humor, explosions and gore, and intelligent parody all in one film. Their movies are kind of like a home movie with a budget. Pegg and Frost really seem to just make movies that they’ll have fun making, and fortunately, it’s also a lot of fun to watch.
This movie had me laughing within two minutes. There really is just one great gag after another. Simon Pegg’s face alone makes me laugh, so I guess it didn’t take much. A lot of the laughs come from the film’s brilliant editing which is so overdramatic it is ridiculous. The trippy montage where Sgt. Angel rides the bus to Sandford had me in stitches. The film continues into a great cast of characters including Jim Broadbent as the kindly police commissioner and the two wise-cracking inspectors Andy and Andy (played wonderfully by Paddy Considine and Rafe Spall), and there’s the stereotypical sexually bold female officer whose every line contains some sort of innuendo and a sinister grocery store manager played by one-time Bond Timothy Dalton. There is some startlingly grisly violence that seems part Monty Python, part horror film. It’s pretty gross, but that’s what I expected from Pegg and Frost; it’s one of their trademarks.
The plot may be where this movie was less tight than Shaun of the Dead. It starts out as a fish-out-of water story (big city cop in the country), then progresses into an Agatha Christie sort of whodunit, then ends in a brilliant Bad Boys-esque shootout. Not that there’s anything wrong with genre-mixing, but I didn’t quite get why. I thought the film was going to be a spoof tribute to over-the-top action flicks, but it really is a lot more. I guess there’s nothing wrong with it, it just feels unfocused at times. Plus, the plot takes a long time to develop. The movie keeps you laughing, but I felt like it could’ve been shortened. As it is, the entire film is worth it for the last 30 minutes in which the good guys and bad guys whip out their guns and start unloading on each other in a perfectly shot tribute to Bad Boys or Commando. It’s over the top and brilliant, every line is perfect as the characters hash through the action film script structure. The two Andys become the wisecracking sidekicks, the female cop becomes the badass girl, Danny becomes Martin Lawrence to Angel’s Will Smith and then they all just start shooting. Some shots are just priceless, like a ground shot looking up at Frost and Pegg in full battle armor as a big helicopter flies over in slow motion. Pegg also gets a great scene fully clad with ammo and weapons riding into town on a horse, a completely ridiculous and very funny image.
Hot Fuzz is a lot of things, but mainly a tribute to 80s action cinema. It’s over the top and ultimately very funny. Frost, Pegg and director Edgar Wright are smart filmmakers who like to make punchy action comedies that satisfy on multiple levels. You get great british humor, explosions and gore, and intelligent parody all in one film. Their movies are kind of like a home movie with a budget. Pegg and Frost really seem to just make movies that they’ll have fun making, and fortunately, it’s also a lot of fun to watch.
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