Movie review: Hot Fuzz

by John P. Meyer

This review's been a long time coming. I've had a couple of previous opportunities to see the film (including once during its screening at the AFI Dallas film fest) and have always arranged to place something else on my agenda at the time it played.

Which is a shame, really, because timing can be everything, and considering the events of earlier in the week I found myself feeling more or less guilty about watching a movie that relies so heavily on gun violence to make its statement. This is totally uncharacteristic - ask anyone who knows me. I mean, many of my favorite directors (Woo, Leone, Scorsese... PEKINPAH, for cripe's sake) make/made their stock in trade on gun violence. I found myself taking cold comfort in the fact that this film was made in Britain by Britons, and therefore could not be blamed on gun-happy Americans. (The comfort proved cold because generations of American films influenced the British filmmakers who made it.)

I don't know - maybe I'm just having a crisis of conscience today. I'll undoubtedly get over it.

In any case, Hot Fuzz brings together much of the team responsible for (and I mean that in a good way) Shaun of the Dead, including lead actors Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, along with director Edgar Wright (who co-wrote the screenplay with Pegg). You'll also note a brief appearance by Bill Nighy (who played Shaun's stepfather in Shaun) as Chief Inspector of the London Metropolitan Police Force (er, I mean "Service"). What you're almost certain NOT to note (because even a keen observer such as myself failed to pick it up until scrolling through the cast list on IMDB) is that both Cate Blanchett and LOTR director Peter Jackson make cameo appearances. Which speaks well of the Wright team's cult factor.

Hot Fuzz is basically composed of two films stitched together in final edit: 1) a low-key, character-driven story which serves to establish the scenario (big-city over-achieving cop is reassigned to a quiet country community where his new laid-back circumstances force him to make much of the minuscule, from a crimestopper standpoint); and 2) a balls-to-the-nitro-impregnated-wall shoot-em-up (in which the supercop gets to load up with live ammo and blast the bloody hell out of village bad blokes, who turn out to be legion). Problem is, the first film is too long, while the second one... well, it's pretty much too long, as well.

First film: every task police officer Nicholas Angel undertakes becomes - as Mary Poppins would sing it - a piece of cake. Including the boring but oh-so-important-for-case-clearing paperwork, which Sergeant Angel can perform as quickly and efficiently as his small arms drill. As a result, his fellow London Metro officers begin to look shabby by comparison - even his superiors (if such they can be termed) recognize the threat Nic poses to their careers, so they railroad him into a posting in the distant rural community of Sandford, which routinely wins top honors as Village of the Year, and whose city officials are more concerned with maintaining their good PR than enforcing every last little civil statute.

Nic's introductory tour of Sandford police headquarters confirms his every fear of the place: the evidence locker is empty (no crimes = no evidence), and the riot room is so chronically disused that it's become home for a family of hedgehogs. (Wish we had those cute little fellows in our East Dallas back yard instead of these cat food-thieving bastards.) Furthermore, the cop he's paired up with (Mr. Frost, as Danny Butterman) is the inept nepotism poster child of the village's chief inspector, Frank Butterman (Jim Broadbent).

When Nicholas spends his first evening in town rousting underage drinkers from the local pub and arresting folks for peeing in the bushes, Chief Inspector Butterman decides it's time to talk him down from his high-pressure, by-the-book city cop grandstand.

Events (slowly) begin to take a new and (finally) interesting turn when the producer of a community theater production of Romeo and Juliet is found - along with his much younger blond lead actress - decapitated by the side of the road, an apparent victim of a tragic (if improbable) auto accident. It's difficult to work up sympathy for this character, because what he's done to Shakespeare is, in fact, truly criminal.

As peculiar "accidental" deaths proliferate and no one in town (including his fellow officers) demonstrates the requisite alarm, Angel determines that something must be rotten in Sandford.

Second film: with Sandford's deadly secret revealed (and you'll have figured it out long before this point, unless you've spent the previous hour conducting mechanical experiments in your head), Angel gears up to kick some chamber of commerce butt. With an array of weaponry confiscated from a local farmer who has a permit for his shotgun but none for the other bits of his personal arsenal of freedom, the valiant crime fighter unleashes a storm of lead and busts a variety of atemi waza on local criminals, regardless of their age or infirmities.

When Sergeant Angel bloodies the nose of a wrinkled granny assailant or guns down a pistol-packin' preacher, a certain amount of shock-induced humor value derives, it's true; I just didn't find it as funny today as I might have a week ago.

Timothy Dalton (from among the lower ranks of ex-James Bonds) does a sardonic turn as Simon Skinner, sneering local department store owner and chief suspect in the nefarious goings-on, while Adam Buxton portrays ill-fated local newshound Tim Messenger, who serves as living proof that the search for journalistic truth can kill. Until it does.

Hot Fuzz carries on being darkly humorous and slapstickingly violent for 121 minutes, and I felt every one of them - particularly during the first film. Editor Chris Dickens could stand to sharpen his scissors, or whatever device is currently employed to chop large chunks of tiresome material from the finished film product.

TOWARDS THE THEATER LOBBY?: "Guilty people often make the first move." - Nicholas Angel to Danny Butterman

EXCEPT IN THIS FILM: "There is always something going on." - Nicholas Angel to Danny Butterman

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