Hot Fuzz (2007)

If there's a more reliable team up than Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost, I don't know it. Before Hot Fuzz,the trio had proven extremely entertaining and intelligent with Spaced and Shaun of the Dead. Sometimes considered high-end parodies, Shaun came more from a desire to make a zombie movie - not make fun of one. It is essentially a love letter to the genre. Hot Fuzz follows that as well. It's not a parody of action movies, it's honoring them.

The story follows super-cop Nicholas Angel as he gets kicked out of the London police service for essentially showing up the entire squad. He is transferred to the country where there hasn't been a crime in twenty years. It is technically a promotion for Angel, but by all means it is really a demotion. They want him out of sight and out of mind. There, Angel goes from stopping drug deals and violent crimes to trying to catch loose swans and yelling at neighbors for cutting hedges without permission. He also has to deal with an entirely incompetent police squad that wouldn't be able to tell a crime if it bit them on the arse.

Yet once Angel gets there, a string of strange accidents occur that end with five deaths. Slowly, Angel starts piecing things together and realizes that these aren't just strange coincidences. Finding links among the victims, he discovers a motive and a suspect. His claims - along with a fair amount of evidence - fall on deaf ears. In fact, the rest of the police team grumbles every time he brings it up. His only ally is the action movie obsessed Danny Butterman, who is intrigued by Angel. Together, they figure out what exactly is going on and fight the forces behind the murders.

In terms of pacing, it's sort of a movie in two parts. The first hour and fifteen minutes are sort of a slow, deliberate build up. For viewers, there is no big mystery that these aren't accidents. We are present when the mysterious, cloaked figure murders Martin Blower and Eve Draper. We are even privy to the suspect when Simon Skinner (played by an always wonderful Timothy Dalton) makes very specific comments regarding the victims. For us, the fact that they are murders and not accidents is not a secret. This can make it sound like the murder/mystery element of the film is pointless, but that's not entirely true. In a funny twist, though we know exactly what's going on when Angel confronts Skinner and the NWA, it turns out the motives are rather unexpected. All of the evidence and clues that point to a very sinister motive turns out to be irrelevant (or mostly at least). It turns out the motive is simply something even more absurd.

Though the first hour and fifteen minutes is sort of a slow build up, it eventually erupts into a highly entertaining action sequence for the final half an hour. Starting off shades of a Western, Angel returns to the village on a white horse, armed to the teeth. There is a momentary stand off, and then it just explodes. The "shit just got real," as they say (in reference to Bad Boys II). And then it is just a crazy, over the top action film, reminiscent of all the best action movies (with another big reference to Point Break.) An awesome action sequence that keeps on giving, you really do need the slower pace for the first hour or so to maximize the efficiency of it. (It's almost like a Dostoevsky novel: you have to sit through five hundred pages of deliberate and slow paced story to get a hugely satisfying payoff.)

The film doesn't play on the "double meaning" thing as much as in their other works, though it is still very much there. All of Skinner's remarks are intentional and blatant, so you already know he's predicting the future. And there are the comments that are more cleverly hidden in their prediction. For example, early on, Danny is grilling Angel about his experience. "Have you ever fired a gun whilst jumping in the air?" he asks among other things lifted from action movies. Angel has not, as he is grounded in a more realistic "reality." Of course, he and Danny wind up doing all of these things during the final shoot out.

Wright and Pegg do show a fondness for on-point character names though. If The World's End made it a point to name everything according to its function, they do a similar thing in Hot Fuzz. Tim Messenger is a newspaper reporter who has information to give to Angel before he is murdered. Roy and Mary Porter own the local pub. Leslie Tiller is the florist. And then a lot of the Neighborhood Watch members have very violent sounding names! Seymour Skinner, Reverend Shooter, Robin Hatcher, James Reaper - these are all names that sound hostile and violent in nature! This, of course, is something that Wright and Pegg love to do, but it definitely was more a thing in Hot Fuzz and The World's End. 

Though ultimately not as good as Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz really is an excellent crime/mystery/action flick. It continues the "bromance" plot elements that were heavy in Shaun. Interestingly, there was originally supposed to be a female love interest for Angel, but they decided it didn't add anything to the story and cut the character. Nick Frost is superb again as Pegg's best friend. This time though, Frost plays an immature character with good intentions while Pegg plays the rather stiff and dry character. If Shaun were about "maturing," then Fuzz is about letting your hair down once in a while.

The rest of the cast is great as well. Timothy Dalton is extremely good in the villainous role of Seymour Skinner. "Lock me away," he says to Angel when he runs into him on a jog. "I'm a slasher...a slasher of prices!" These, of course, are the double meaning jokes that Pegg and Wright love, only here it's not meant to be hidden. They make it rather clear that Skinner is a bad guy from the start. However, he then goes on with a more subtle line as he jogs away, "Catch me later!"

Timothy Dalton is awesomely menacing. 

Jim Broadbent is also great as the role of police chief, intentionally dumbing down his men and women. He punishes his son Danny, after a night of heavy drinking, with birthday cake and ice cream - to the chagrin of Angel. Then, of course, there are wonderful cameos by some of England's finest: Martin Freeman, Bill Nighy, Steve Coogan, and an always delightful Stephen Merchant. The entire cast is great, and as always, Wright uses a smartly selected soundtrack to go with it.

Hot Fuzz is probably not as intelligent as Shaun or World's End, it is still an amazing, entertaining, and smart film. Being the worst of those three movies is not a bad thing at all. It's the difference in an A and A-, really. It isn't a mindless action film, but it is still a really entertaining one.

REDUCTIVE RATING: Awesome!