Hot Fuzz - review

Hot Fuzz (15)
Dir. Edgar Wright

Reviewed by Matt Adcock

Every minute of every day – a crime is being committed somewhere. I can feel it; I can sense the scum on our streets. For too long people have cried ‘where are the police when we need them?' But in this feral world, one man can make a difference – that man is Nicholas Angel.

Angel is a super cop, he eats, sleeps and drinks crime busting, he’s a force of nature with a badge and notepad and now you can catch him in action because Hot Fuzz is kicking down the doors of your local cinema even as we speak.
Arriving in the impressive shockwave of top Brit horror comedy Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz ups the ante, boosts the budget and delivers quality laughs, action and violence way beyond the call of duty.

Simon ‘Spaced’ Pegg confirms his place as the saviour of British genre comedy films – co-writing and starring in this slick, cop overload that manages to be loyal homage to Hollywood action films like Bad Boys, whilst skillfully playing the material for genuine laughs! Aided and abetted by the excellent Edgar ‘Shaun of the Dead’ Wright who also writes and takes directors duties shows that he can out think and out gun the lorry load of Shane Blacks packing Lethal Weapons.
Hot Fuzz is a bona fide masterpiece; it explodes with comic talent who for once actually deliver all that you might want. Timothy Dalton hams it up deliciously as a slimy Somerfield supermarket owner, who may or may not be linked to psychotically murderous secret society and there’s also good work by Bill Nighy, Steve Coogan, Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine and Jim Broadbent to name but a few. It’s like a ‘who’s who’ of current top UK talent.
My mate Alan is even in the film – actually it might be Nick ‘Shaun of the Dead’ Frost now I look closely, he’s the rural bobby assigned to partner Pegg and together they form the best cop buddy relationship ever to grace the screen. When not in the pub or watching Point Break on DVD, these two British ‘Bad Boys’ tear up the overly perfect Midsomer Murder esq village and bring a level of destruction and mayhem to the screen which left my face aching from having grinned so much.
Hot Fuzz is an agile beast in that it cross genres with ease, all the while building to an unforgettable climax. You’ll smile as it breaks you in gently with some fun background / set up, you’ll laugh as the film references come thick and fast and the plot develops but by the end you’ll be whooping and cheering as the slow motion gunplay and over the top action blow you away. One note of caution – if you’re squeamish about gore and / or adverse to bad language then you might have to recalibrate your thresholds as there are serious amounts of both but here they just add to the overall level of comic spectacle. On leaving the cinema my wife had to literally restrain me from dashing around the car park pulling heroic mock gunfight dives through the air and then burning off in hot pursuit of some make believe crims (she enjoyed it too though in case you were wondering – so it even works as a date flick).
Working Title films should be very proud of what has been achieved with Hot Fuzz – it’s a must see, repeat watch orgy of fun.
If you have a pulse I urge you to check out Hot Fuzz ASAP.

Darkmatters rating system (out of 5):

Action öööö – builds up to a total eyeball melting finale
Laughs ö ö ö ö ö – awesome, killer one liners keep coming
Horror öööö – plenty grimness – lots of gore
Babes öö – not really anything much

Overall ö ö ö ö ö (Bring the noise!!!)



Darkmatters: H O M E