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But Angel has a discerning eye for crime and, really, what’s more suspicious than a group of ceaselessly contented townspeople? Everywhere he turns
in the hamlet, he senses something sinister lurking, though the good village folk treat him like a psychotic malcontent addicted to danger. That is,
until mysterious accidents start killing them off one by one.
Hot Fuzz made millions in the UK, and it’s sure to catch the same word-of-mouth buzz in America that Edgar Wright and Pegg’s Shaun of the
Dead garnered three years ago. Just as Dead was both a spoof and a
suspenseful zombie movie, Hot Fuzz plays like a crime thriller and an out-and-out parody of action and buddy-cop flicks. In the film’s
penultimate shoot-out, Wright and Pegg run the gamut of movie references from such clichés like drop-and-roll rapid-fire gunplay to even
Chinatown (“Forget it, Angel. It’s Sandford.”) They even send-up Dead in a silent sequence where Angel stands in line at a deli as
the cashier seems totally unaware of the crime spree outside. (But my favorite reference, hands down, is the random but nonetheless repeated
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe shout-out, “By the power of Grayskull!”)
Pegg, with fellow Dead alum Nick Frost (as fumbling drunkard cop Dan Butterman) at his side, is almost indescribably funny as he stares down a
shifty, aging innkeeper with all the disbelieving intensity of Chinatown’s Jack Nicholson. Both Pegg and Frost are aided by a list of cameos and supporting roles
from some of the biggest acting names in Britain, everyone from Bill Nighy and Martin Freeman to Jim Broadbent and Anne Reid.
Zachary Jones
Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) is a top cop with an arrest rate so high
above his colleagues that his superiors have decided to transplant him elsewhere so the rest of London’s police force can get their sense of pride
back. Unfortunately for Sergeant Angel, his new beat is in the country village of Sandford, a town which has won Village of the Year for too many years
to count and whose crime rate is nonexistent.
April 20, 2007
