The trick is to not make fun of movies that arguably already poke fun at themselves. Why just spoof when you can embrace them lovingly for what they are? Hot Fuzz follows a formula that was already proven to be fried gold in Shaun of the Dead: take funny characters, put them in a seriously deadly situation, play the movie relatively straight according to the genre, and watch as the characters react like incompetents – thus the funny. In Shaun, it was a zombie outbreak. In Hot Fuzz, it’s a sleepy English town terrorized by a hooded serial butcher, which the ragtag gang of local cops seem to have no interest in admitting, let alone investigate.
Enter Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg). His name isn’t the only part of him that comes across as an action hero. He’s a London cop so freakin’ good, he’s making the entire police force – excuse me, police service – look bad. In a switcheroo from the cop movie cliché of banishing the renegade cop, Angel – the most uptight, straight-laced, by-the-book uniformed cop – is transferred to the idyllic town of Sandford, where nothing ever happens and their most rampant crime is a street performer pretending to be a statue. When corpses start to pile up from gruesome “accidents,” Angel suspects a slasher at work. He sets his eyes on a highly suspicious supermarket owner (a very funny performance by Timothy Dalton), much to the dismay of the rest of Sandford PD, who are convinced that Angel’s crazy from all the peace and quiet.
The only person helping Angel is action movie junkie Danny Butterman (Nick Frost), a fool’s cop who can only dream of getting “proper action and sh-t” in Sandford that Angel has experienced in London – only Danny seems to think that proper action means busting crime the way Will Smith and Martin Lawrence do it.
For its first half, Hot Fuzz spoofs the noir and mystery corner of the cop movie line-up such as L.A. Confidential or Se7en, spiced with a few touches of slasher-flick violence. As expected, when things go belly-up, the film suddenly crashes into John Woo and Michael Bay territory. Gunfights, explosions, car chases, and Angel and Danny speaking in action movie lingo. It would be lying to say that the second half isn’t as exciting as it is sidesplitting. If you ever wonder what The Wild Bunch would look like with senior citizens, you’re in luck.
The way this film uses the delirious camera techniques of various action directors are actually just as effective as the way those filmmakers use them, but you know that these guys are joking around, so those camera effects become instantly funny in Hot Fuzz. How can you not giggle when Tony Scott’s acid trip-style action editing and blaring rock music are used to show Angel filing boring paperwork?
It’s obvious that a lot of people will rank how this movie fares against Shaun of the Dead, but it won’t be fair to say that Shaun is better just because you like the zombie genre more. Yes, half of the movies in the buddy cop genre are utter trash, but Hot Fuzz raises them to a pedestal that actually gets you to think twice about those movies. Fuzz is just as smart, just as witty, and just as fun as Shaun; what it’s lacking is the cult charm. Part of the fault is Simon Pegg actually putting on a character this time. Not that he’s bad at it, far from it – but Nick Angel is not the lovable, identifiable, geeky everyman character that Pegg usually plays so perfectly. That hurts it just a bit, yet the chemistry between him and Nick Frost is just as strong and just as funny.
Hot Fuzz is a broader kind of movie than Shaun of the Dead. There’s something here for everybody. The first half has the quirky characters, clever wordplay, and deadpan treatment that are quintessentially British comedy; but then the Fuzz hits the fan and it’s a non-stop laugh-out-loud riot full of action movie references and clichés. One thing or the other, this movie is a blast, and it’s a torture to wait for these guys to make their next movie.
"Hot Fuzz" opens April 20, 2007 and is rated . . Written by Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright.
