by Daniel Johnson

Created on: April 25, 2007   Last Updated: May 09, 2007

HOT FUZZ (Dir. Edgar Wright, 2007) Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's follow-up to the cult classic in waiting SHAWN OF THE DEAD trades the zombies and relationship squabbles for cop action movie cliches and we should so be thankful. Especially when the recent state of American film satire comes in the form of EPIC MOVIE that is. Pegg turns the tables on his stoner slacker character from SHAWN (actually more SPACED - the BBC TV show that is not available yet on DVD but you can find Youtube clips here) and portays Nicholas Angel - a straight-laced hero policemen transferred to a small British country town named Sandford. A town so old fashioned and idyllic that the Kinks "Village Green Preservation Society" plays on the soundtrack. Once there he finds a strangely suspect death toll, a drunken over-fed on pastries police force (sorry, "service"), and a evil supermarket mogul played by 2-timer James Bond Timothy Dalton (THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS, LICENSE TO KILL) who puts in a wickedely confident performance. Fellow policeman-officer Nick Frost (also from SPACED and SHAWN) schools Pegg in old-school action cimema like BAD BOYS and POINT BREAK while Pegg schools Frost in sober law enforcement procedre. Though the first hour lagged and dragged a bit eliciting only mild chuckles and giggles, the last act pulls out the hilarious over-the-top stops. HOT FUZZ may be awfully titled, but that like all the cringe inducing fake-out endings and the over abundance of wired wit that makes ones eyes roll repeatedely while smirking is precisely the point.

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