The Greater Good! "Shut it!" - One of the best comedies for the last 20 years

Rating: 9/10 (16 October 2010)

Detective Nicholas Angel is an exceptional officer. So much so that he is promoted and moved to Sandford, Gloucester as a punishment for making his fellow officers look decidedly shoddy by comparison. In Sandford the pace of country life is downright sedate and the crime rate is practically zero. However upon arrival it appears that while the crime rate is exceptionally low, the accident rate is sky high. Could it all be a huge coincidence or is there something much more sinister afoot. With the assistance of the chief constable's inept son, Danny Buttermen, an action movie nut who thinks that being a cop is all car chases and gunfights, Seargent Angel has to uncover the truth before another mysterious accident happens to him.
After writing, starring and directing "Shaun of the dead" Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg turn their sights to the action/comedy genre, transposing the usual American fare and bringing it to a rustic English setting. Simon Pegg decides in this film to take more of a straight man role and leaves most of the comedy to his friend Nick Frost, who does not let him down giving what could just have been the stooge role of Danny Butterman a great deal of charm and pathos. The rest of the supporting cast do their jobs supremely well, from the Oscar-winning Jim Broadbent, through to Olivia Coleman, Kevin Eldon, Anne Reid, Adam Buxton, Bill Bailey and the supremely brilliant Timothy Dalton who excels as the seemingly obvious villain of the piece. The script and the direction are superb and the film switches effortlessly between comedy and action and occasionally horror. The other mistake that the film so deftly avoids is the desire to slap some kind of love interest in there. By doing this it doesn't muddy the waters and simply lets the film stride those two genre's without having to pause for some pointless sub-plot.
Like all the best films this is one that gets better with subsequent viewings although just extolling the virtues of this film was not the main reason for my review. The main reason is to clarify one thing that always gets my goat about so many of these reviews. Many people refer to this film as a spoof. Let's be clear about this, Edgar, Nick and Simon are, undoubtedly fans of this genre and wanted to do their own homage to the films that gave them all so much joy and entertainment. In doing it not as a spoof (a la Epic Movie) and instead relishing the genre itself they have created a film that can hold it's head high with the best of this genre that the US has produced over the last 20 thirty years.
As Nicholas Angel says ...Punch that sh!t! Awesome!