directed by Edgar Wright
written by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright
I wasn't a huge fan of SHAUN OF THE DEAD, but I certainly liked it well enough to want to see the follow-up by the Pegg/Wright team, the first time I dragged my sorry ass to a movie theatre in about six months.
Forget it Nick... it's Sandford.
Not unlike SHAUN, HOT FUZZ is a British-based parody of a genre of movies that aren't associated with Britain, in this case the high-action buddy cop movie, specifically (as in they show up on screen here) films like POINT BREAK and BAD BOYS. I'm not a huge fan of that particular genre, but this has enough twists and turns to make it fresh. The basic plot is that the overly productive by-the-book wonder-cop Nicholas Angel is transferred out of London for making everyone else look bad to quiet small-town Sandford, where naturally things aren't quite as they seem, and he has to fix all of that while learning how to unwind from his new partner.
Haven't you ever wondered why the crime rate is so low, but the accident rate is so high?
The movie follows the general formula of mixing in straightforward situations with punctuations of mild insanity, with the insanity levels and frequency gradually increasing until that's all there is for the last act of the movie. Glorious, fast-moving, nonsensical and captivating insanity.
Pegg and his returning sidekick Nick Frost play off each other magnificently throughout the movie, making for a few touching scenes amidst the chaos.
Despite a few minor flaws in the pacing, and a few more obvious bits, it's a great movie, by far the best I've seen this year[*].
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[*]Note comment in paragraph 1
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