Action comedy makes fun of action movies, so is it a parody of itself?

Rating: 10/10 (6 June 2008)

Hilarious comedy combining a wide range of humor, from slapstick to satire, in an 'in you face' way. Basically this movie is filmed like an action movie: flashing between camera angles making a 'whoosh' sound, plenty of swearing, over the top characters and the quintessential action movie cliché large explosion to top it off.
There is very little action except about 20 minutes, most of it at the end. The movie is about the perfect police man, Nicolas Angel, who gets transfered from his London job--because he makes the others in the department look bad--to an odd little village in the country. There with his lazy incompetent partner who is infatuated with action movies he investigates a series a 'accidents' which he believes are really murders.
Other than his perfect reputation, Sgt. Angel is a realistic police man the only really plausibly realistic character. He does not like to get in to physical confrontation because there is "a lot of paperwork", he dislikes guns and says his best police tool is a notebook. By contrast, his partner Danny Butterman is lazy, incompetent and irresponsible.
Most of the movie plays out as a mystery comedy with action-like- sequencing. Plenty of British humor and slapstick. And when the movie truly gets heated up the multi-layer humor makes this one of the best comedies in recent years.
If you like--or maybe even dislike--most action movies and love comedy then this movie is an excellent choice--but caution: some action involved.