REVIEW: Hot Fuzz

Mar - 15 | By: Josh Nelson | no comments.

Describing his cult TV show Spaced which ran between 1999 and 2001, director Edgar Wright reportedly remarked, “It’s a show by geeks, for geeks”. For many, the comment would’ve been an equally apt description of his successful 2004 zombie-horror-comedy, Shaun of the Dead. In what may prove to be music to the ears of men-children around the world, Hot Fuzz takes the geeks-for-geeks approach and this time turns the volume all the way to 11. Apologies to all non-geeks but I figured what’s the point of a review of a self-referential film without a few in-jokes thrown in for good measure?

Re-teaming with co-writer and star of Shaun Simon Pegg, the cast of Hot Fuzz overflows with talent from film and television; Steve Coogan, Bill Bailey, Martin Freedman, Jim Broadbent, Timothy Dalton, Edward Woodward, Bill Nighy and Nick Frost. This time around, Pegg stars as Nick Angel, a London ‘supercop’ whose impressive arrest record and by-the-book approach see him exiled to the sleepy hollow town of Sanford Gloucester, as penitence for making the rest of the force look incompetent. However, when a series of ‘accidental’ deaths bearing all the hallmarks of calculated ‘murder’ occur, Angel and his oafish partner Butterman (Frost) begin an investigation that soon uncovers the town’s dark secrets.

The filmic references come thick and fast throughout, everything from Sweeney!, Heat, Chinatown, The Wicker Man, Bad Boys, Point Break and High Plains Drifter among many others, gets a nod. But Hot Fuzz is much more than empty citation, unlike recent parodies such as Epic Movie, or Date Movie, the film’s lead characters are as likeable as they are believable. Pegg is great as the straight-laced Angel and once again Frost provides the perfect foil as his loutish action-film obsessed partner. This may be requisite viewing for geeks, but for mine the film works equally well if you’re not ‘getting’ all the in-jokes. Fingers crossed it finds the broader audience it deserves.