Hot Fuzz (2007)

I'm not going to beat about the bush here. I loved this film. I am Nick Frost's character Danny Butterman you see, well maybe a small part of him. The bored film geek who sits about waiting for something to happen. Sorry, I'm getting a bit ahead of myself here. Hot Fuzz is a comedy starring Simon Pegg as super cop Nick Angel who is reassigned from the Met where he single handedly decimates London's criminal population with his hardcore determination and all round greatness as a crime fighting machine. He is promoted to sergeant and sent to his new patch, sleepy Gloucestershire village Sandford.

Here he meets up with some fantastically stereotyped locals and best of all, his hapless new partner Danny. Hot Fuzz is basically a satire of glossy Hollywood action movies. It fuses the high octane style so often used in big budget movies with a brilliantly British tale of shady goings on in a sleepy country village. The director (Edgar Wright) often plays on the contrast, using many staples straight out of the action movie handbook, such as loud explosions, screaming sirens and shotgun cutting to unfold the action. As Angel is deployed to the village for example his journey from the Met to a rainy train station is punctuated with this shotgun style of scene cutting, ending with him dripping wet at the station clutching his pot plant. As a bit of a film geek this kind of playfulness couldn't fail to make me smile.

The village's often surreal characters also really add to the likeableness. We have, among too many to recount in full, a pompous thespian, drunken tycoon, zealous neighbourhood watch members and a station full of useless police men. Perhaps most notable of all is Timothy Dalton's (yes James Bond!) slimy convenience store owner. Aside from Danny this is probably my favourite character as he often turns up at just the right time with a Cheshire cat grin and a cheesy one liner (Arrest me I'm a slasher... of prices!). And then we have Danny. Nick Frost is often hysterical as the heavy drinking, lazy, daydreaming foil to Simon Pegg's straight man.

The action film world is cleverly explored through Danny's constant questioning of his partner. "Have you ever jumped through the air while firing two guns? Have you ever jumped through the air while firing one gun?" As the story progresses our two heroes finally get a chance to perform all these testosterone filled sequences that Danny has fantasised over. Perhaps most notably is one scene from Point Break that is surely the closest Keanu Reeves has ever been to acting! The genius of Hot Fuzz is to contrast the big budget action movie stereotypes with the sleepy English village stereotypes, giving us a really enjoyable and cleverly observed satire of both worlds.

My only real criticism is that this perhaps drags on for about 20 minutes too long. I felt like Pegg and Frost were the film geeks indulging in their chance to be action heroes more so than their actual characters would have done. But I have to forgive them for that; I would have done exactly the same thing given the chance!

8/10