Saturday, April 28, 2007

Hot Fuzz: Review


Film geeks around the world can breathe a heavy sigh of relief as Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright have come through again with Hot Fuzz, a blisteringly funny, keenly intelligent look at the world of action films, lampooning every film under the sun from 80's classics like Lethal Weapon to the more recent Michael Bay blockbusters, such as the Bad Boys series. The attempts at satire are noble and the results are pure dynamite. Almost every joke works and by the delirious conclusion, the references are flying quickly across the screen in a furious pastiche and from the editing to the outright homoeroticism, Hot Fuzz is dead on and in the form of This is Spinal Tap and Dr. Strangelove, ends up being so close to its source, it literally becomes it. As a result, the film is not only the best comedy thus far in 2007 but the best action film as well and unless there is a surprise sleeper in the summer, may very well be still holding those two titles come year's end.

Thanks to a memorable script, co-penned by Pegg and Wright, the cast is able to sink its teeth into a plethora of comic situations and take advantage of every opportunity. Brilliantly combining more or less every action cliché from the past twenty years and filtering it through their own twisted cinematic vision, Pegg and Wright have concocted scenario after scenario that easily play into their overall plot. The film can feel episodic at times, but as it picks up steam, the gags are being brilliantly and effortlessly weaved into the narrative progress. This allows for our hero to ride into the town square on a (literal) majestic white horse for his final confrontation with the increasingly hostile townsfolk.


Pegg, who not only co-wrote but is the lead in Hot Fuzz, plays Nicholas Angel, a London cop who thanks to his high arrest record, angers his superiors (Bill Nighy, Steve Coogan, Martin Freeman) and gets shipped off to Sandford, a small township in the English countryside that is a perpetual contender for "Best Village in the UK". Much to his chagrin, he is met there by a low crime rate and a relatively inept police department filled with a pair of mustached detectives (including Paddy Considine in a side splitting performance) and a chief investigator (Jim Broadbent) who is more concerned with ice cream and cake than catching criminals. The chief's son, played by Pegg's Shaun of the Dead co-star Nick Frost, quickly takes to Angel's action filled background and like a devoted puppy, sticks to his heroic sidekick like glue. Pegg and Frost are simply wonderful together, retaining the chemistry that helped to make Shaun of the Dead so likable. They are perfect foils for each other with Pegg's deadpan seriousness clashing with Frost's manic energy in an explosion of comedic bliss. The rest of the cast, highlighted by the likes of Timothy Dalton and Stephen Merchant, is equally as strong and as a whole, the cast is a best comedic ensemble since 2005's 40 Year Old Virgin.

Wright's direction is always assured, even in the craziest moments of the film. The film's breathless conclusion, as mentioned above, is a sublime mixture of comedy and action and Wright handles it all with ease, wonderfully aping the absurd camera movements and compositions of Bay. In fact, the action sequences work so well that Bay might serve to take notes from Hot Fuzz in order to inject his films, which have gone from bloated, entertaining guy flicks to downright bores, with some of the vitality and energy that they have so painfully been missing over the past years. Despite its relatively marginal budget, never once does the film feel like anything other than a pure summer blockbuster. It is filled with fast paced editing and visual delights that, unlike its larger budget, American counterparts, actually succeed in carrying the film's energy from one scene to another. The difference here is that the energy is a blissful comedic one, not a pretentious seriousness that plagues so much of the big studio output and sucks the fun out of what should be entertaining but ultimately forgettable pop convections. Wright and Pegg seem to recognize that too many of summer blockbusters are devoid of not only fun but intelligence as well. Thankfully, Hot Fuzz has both in droves.



There are only a few films in recent memory (Tarantino's Kill Bill saga, Shane Black's Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang) that so brilliantly cross references our cinematic past and creates such a stunning pastiche of where a certain genre has been. The kaleidoscopic nature of Hot Fuzz could become tiresome but the film is an invigorating, exciting experience that leaves the viewer slightly dazed but utterly enthralled. With its superior action sequences, this is a film best experienced on the big screen (thankfully, it seems like people are coming out to see it; my theater was almost completely full and despite only playing on 800 or so screens, it was able to pull in $5.85 million in its first weekend). There are some moments of graphic violence but for the most part, the action is over the top and comical. A riveting, hilarious experience from start to finish, Hot Fuzz is the best new film thus far this year and will quickly enter the realm of comedic masterpieces that are simply dizzying with their antics and gags.

*****

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