Hot Fuzz Movie Review

Hot Fuzz (2007)

Rent Hot Fuzz on Amazon video
Written by: Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg
Directed by: Edgar Wright
Starring: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Timothy Dalton, Jim Broadbent, Martin Freeman, Bill Nighy, Paddy Considine, Olivia Colman
Rated: R
Watch the trailer

Plot
A skilled London police officer is assigned to a small town that 's harboring a dark secret.

Verdict
I love this comedy. It's clever, witty, and just fun. The humor is British, subtle, and multi layered while being endlessly quotable. It's a spoof of action movies that pokes fun at the usual tropes before embracing many of those same tropes. The detail is incredible. Almost all of the jokes have a pay off when they're made and later in the movie. If you haven't seen this, you should. For the greater good.
Watch it.

Review
Hot Fuzz is the follow up to Shaun of the Dead and it's even better.  I'm a big fan of Shaun of the Dead, it was a parody of zombie movies from people who enjoyed zombie movies. The humor was often subtle and multi-layered. This was the second in an unofficial trilogy, and while End of the World is a good alien parody, it just couldn't live up to it's predecessors.

Hot Fuzz rewards multiple watches. There is so much crammed into this you can easily miss a joke. Look at text and background characters. Often there's a joke in the background you didn't even see until you watch this again.
Everything matters. This doesn't make throwaway jokes just because. Even small details come full circle. Nick wonders what a guy with a big coat is hiding and Danny provides an excuse. We see that guy later, and he was indeed hiding something.  The jokes are so well crafted they provide an immediate benefit as well as a pay off later. The humor is subtle often relying on word play. I'm having to refrain from just listing my favorite qutoes.

From the jump this establishes Nick Angel as the top cop. He's completely by the numbers with high marks in advanced driving, advanced cycling, and he was stabbed in the hand by Peter Jackson dressed as Santa Claus.
Angel is so good that his precinct wants to get rid of him. His arrest record is so high he makes everyone else look bad.

Simon Pegg plays Nick Angel.

Nick ends up in a small countryside village with a less than adept police force. Nick is quick to point out proper procedure and nomenclature, though the only one that doesn't despise him is Danny. Danny thinks being a cop is the experience depicted in Bad Boys II. Of course they meet after Nick arrested Danny before realizing he too was a cop. They are complete opposites as most cops in movies are.

Timothy Dalton is great, and you can tell he's having a lot of fun. He introduces himself to Nick by stating, "I'm a slasher.. of prices." The movie is heavy on foreshadowing, but you never quite know where it's going to go. We see a masked figure and we begin to think that Nick is right, the masked man must be Skinner. When Nick accuses Skinner, his proof doesn't follow.

Nick and Danny.

Nick and Danny are caught up in a string of murders as they become friends. Nick concocts a convoluted conspiracy that seems plausible as far as movies go and his ideas are all but confirmed by a local florist. It's how the plot unfolds in many action movies with a side character laying it all out. The reality of the killings is much simpler. It wasn't a ploy to get money. The reason people were killed were for the greater good. These reasons are actually quite petty.

The first half of this movie is Nick telling Danny how to be a cop. Once the conspiracy is revealed this embraces action movie tropes. Nick told Danny life isn't an action movie, and this becomes exactly an action movie. Many things planted in the beginning of the movie come back around. Farmers have guns as do farmer's mums.

You need to pay attention to everything because those details are likely to resurface. Just to note, this does get pretty gory. It's almost cartoonish, but be forewarned.
This is well crafted. From the jokes, to even edits. There's a scene that cuts back and forth between Nick and Danny and a house explosion. There's attention to detail in those cuts as the movie links one scene to the other. That level of craft is prevalent throughout this movie.