Hot Fuzz (2007)
Coming out of a growing group of British comedies centered on Simon Pegg and a familiar cast, this one takes on small town English sensibilities with typical zaniness. It's a blast.
Nerdy London supercop Nicholas Angel is banished to a quaint little village because he's making the London cops look bad. But here he seems unwelcome because he's stirring up trouble—arresting underage drinkers, for example. As mysterious murders begin to accumulate, he sniffs a dastardly conspiracy. With sidekick Nick Frost, something will indeed be done about it.
The whole movie is fast and faster, edited with a fury, and in the first ten minutes we get the overachieving nature of our hero and also meet a handful of great British comic forces, including Bill Nighy. But don't get your hopes up—they don't reappear. Still, Pegg and Frost and a host of strong, quirky, smart performers make up the wonderful townspeople, some of them with little comic flourishes that make you laugh out loud. Often.
So, yeah, this is comic, for sure, and fast, which means you have to stay on your toes to catch some of the jokes (some plays on words in particular). About two thirds the way through it all, Angel shifts to Clint Eastwood mode (Dirty Harry, that is) and the vigilante cop in all of us (apparently) takes over. At first this is funny, but even a die hard action adventure fan will tire of the endless chasing and shooting and shooting and chasing—it seems to be half an hour. It's not without humor or variety, but in the overall plot, things have come to a halt. Oddly enough.
And it ends with a bang. Of course.
Enjoyable, yes, and really funny at its best. For any "Shaun of the Dead" fans (which is the lynchpin of this kind of British humor), this movie is a must.
Coming out of a growing group of British comedies centered on Simon Pegg and a familiar cast, this one takes on small town English sensibilities with typical zaniness. It's a blast.
Nerdy London supercop Nicholas Angel is banished to a quaint little village because he's making the London cops look bad. But here he seems unwelcome because he's stirring up trouble—arresting underage drinkers, for example. As mysterious murders begin to accumulate, he sniffs a dastardly conspiracy. With sidekick Nick Frost, something will indeed be done about it.
The whole movie is fast and faster, edited with a fury, and in the first ten minutes we get the overachieving nature of our hero and also meet a handful of great British comic forces, including Bill Nighy. But don't get your hopes up—they don't reappear. Still, Pegg and Frost and a host of strong, quirky, smart performers make up the wonderful townspeople, some of them with little comic flourishes that make you laugh out loud. Often.
So, yeah, this is comic, for sure, and fast, which means you have to stay on your toes to catch some of the jokes (some plays on words in particular). About two thirds the way through it all, Angel shifts to Clint Eastwood mode (Dirty Harry, that is) and the vigilante cop in all of us (apparently) takes over. At first this is funny, but even a die hard action adventure fan will tire of the endless chasing and shooting and shooting and chasing—it seems to be half an hour. It's not without humor or variety, but in the overall plot, things have come to a halt. Oddly enough.
And it ends with a bang. Of course.
Enjoyable, yes, and really funny at its best. For any "Shaun of the Dead" fans (which is the lynchpin of this kind of British humor), this movie is a must.