I know this is a bold statement,
but I’ll just put it out there anyway: Hot
Fuzz is the best guy flick of the new millennium. Hell, it’s quite possibly one of the best guy
movies of all time. I know, I know, in a
year alone that’s come out with such macho films as 300 and Grindhouse, this
statement might seem incredibly bold, but it’s true all the same. From the same minds that brought us the now
classic Shaun of the Dead comes their
ode, no, opus in honor of the buddy-cop-over-the-top-fucking- bloody-action-extravaganza
genre. Is it a horror film? Not exactly.
But with minds like these and a film like this, that hardly matters.
Sgt. Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg,
sans cricket bat) is London’s
top cop. Expert in pretty much every
field ranging from armed response and pursuit to martial arts and chess, he is
without a doubt the cream of the crop.
He has an arrest rate 400% higher than any other individual officer,
and, well, the other police aren’t entirely fond of it. He’s making them all look bad, so working as
only a bureaucracy can, they promote him into Britain’s #1 crime-free town, the
nice little hamlet of Sandford. He’s a
man without purpose in a town whose greatest crime is an escaped swan. He’s given the single most incompetent
partner in town (Nick Frost, sans “I got wood!” t-shirt), an alcoholic action
movie aficionado who also happens to be the son of the police chief. Life is boring in Sandford, and Angel is at
the end of his rope.
And that’s when the bodies start
piling up. For a town with such a small
population, the body count seems to be, well, a little extreme. The higher ups in town want to rule them all
as accidents, but Angel knows better.
There’s a murderer on the loose who is brutally murdering innocent
townfolk, and sometimes the only way to show you’re right is to do it with a
lot of guns. And leaping through the air
while firing two guns at the same time.
And drop-kicking an old woman in the face. All right, am I giving too much away?
For lack of a better word, most
every element of Hot Fuzz is
perfect. The dream team of Wright, Pegg
and Frost are rapidly proving themselves to be one of the best comedy teams in
the business today, yet at the same time they’ve proven their skill to be
beyond just one genre. They can pull off
a zombie movie. They can pull off a
romantic comedy. They can pull off a
murder mystery. They can pull off a
bloody as hell over the top action movie.
They can do all this, and still maintain an intelligent and often
heartfelt film. There literally seems to
be nothing beyond these guys’ skills.
From a writing and directing standpoint, Hot Fuzz is purely top notch.
The film also benefits from some
awesome performances. In stark contrast
to his bumbling Shaun, Pegg’s performance as Sgt. Nicholas Angel is amazingly
professional. It’s not a stretch to see
him in his element as one of the best commando-style cops England has to
offer. The yin to his yang, bumbling
officer Danny Butterman, is played to perfection by Shaun cohort Nick Frost. For
the longest time he appears to be a walking and talking mistake, an accident
waiting to happen, the usual comedic foil you’re bound to find in any standard
buddy cop film. However, his earnest and
honest performance of a man who knows his limitations (coupled with some of the
films best one-liners) proves that he is without a doubt the films emotional
core. The most surprising performance to
come out of the film comes from ex-James Bond Timothy Dalton, who plays the local grocery store
owner with a particular slimy smarminess and general creepiness about him that
you are so certain for the longest time that he is the killer, and once his
full involvement is revealed it’s still an awesome revelation.
But what is an action film
without a certain level of gratuitousness?
This film goes as over the top as humanly possible while still finding a
way to make it work. See, much like its
predecessor Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz is
a film that acknowledges and embraces the stereotypes and clichés of the genre,
and then takes them in wild new awesome directions. It’s a movie filled with car chases, gun
fights, explosions, drawn out slow motion shots of guys screaming
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!” while holding a dying friend. I mean, we’ve seen these things before, we’ve
seen them millions of times, but still this is a movie that manages to make
them work in brand new ways.
And did I mention this film is
gory? Though they may have switched from
zombies (and Don’t) to buddy cop
films, Wright and co. still haven’t forgotten their roots. Hot
Fuzz is gory. Excessively so at
points. And it is awesome. People are decapitated, shot to shot to shit,
stuck in bear traps, lose feet and are impaled brutally through the throat on a
pair of hedge clippers. One of the films
standout gore points involves a church and music straight out of The Omen, but this is no lightning
rod. Oh no, it’s something delightfully
heavier, blunter and all sorts of gooier.
They know their blood and guts.
So is Hot Fuzz a horror film? Not quite. It’s a murder mystery/buddy cop film more
than anything else, but I urge anyone and out there who considers themselves a
genre fan and a fan of Shaun of the Dead to
see this movie. It defies basic
definition as a movie, and is a classic in the making. I know I tend to gush, and sometimes it’s not
always worth it, but this one is. For
lack of any better words, Hot Fuzz is
fucking awesome. See it. See it soon.
Then see it again and laugh like hell all over again. It is just that good.