The "Fuzz" is "Hot!"

Rating: 10/10 (31 July 2007)

Here we are again, reviewing yet another movie about cops & robbers. But "Hot Fuzz" isn't the usual cops & robbers stuff that we're used to seeing here in the United States. Instead, "Hot Fuzz" comes fresh off the boat from good old Great Britain, and satirizes American action movies with joyful glee.
Perhaps the reason the project is so successful is because it comes to us from the same happy-go-lucky British comedians who brought us the delightful "Shaun of the Dead" back in 2004 during what as an apparent peak in a craze for zombie movies at the cinemas. Yet, "Hot Fuzz" is being released in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, so some might say the filmmakers are being insensitive when it's all really just bad timing. Now we shouldn't let the actions of one individual allow us to put judgment upon one little action movie, should we?
"Hot Fuzz" was directed by "Shaun of the Dead" Edgar Wright, and features Sergeant Nicholas Angel (co-screenwriter "Shaun" Simon Pegg), a dedicated London police officer who is suddenly reassigned to a quiet little village called Sandford because he's making his fellow policemen look bad with his ridiculously high arrest record. Once there, he is slightly miffed by the lack of criminal activity that was apparent back in his native London (his biggest arrest happens to be on a bunch of underage drinkers), but later events threaten to change that.
A series of suspicious and grisly accidents has been rocking the Sandford area for some time now, and Angel and his bumbling new partner Danny Butterman (Nick Frost) are hot on the case. Butterman's an adrenalin junkie, a young live-wire eager for some action reminiscent of his favorite American action movies like "Point Break" (1991), "Bad Boys II" (2003), and the "Lethal Weapon" films. Angel's deeper investigation into Sandford's public records shows a low crime rate, but an incredibly high accident rate. He suspects that these "accidents" are homicides made to conceal something greater.
"Hot Fuzz" isn't necessarily better than "Shaun of the Dead" but is smarter than it. "Hot Fuzz" is too self-conscious to be an out-right parody of American action movies but works best as a satire. The movie takes a look at America's obsession with gun culture and satirizes the hell out of it in several adrenalin-pumping action scenes. Though of course, not much happens during the course of the first hour as Angel and Butterman go through the usual buddy-cop movie motions and endure tedious non-action-related police-work, but things begin to pick up in the second hour once Angel and Butterman embark on their investigation to uncover the truth behind the strange events plaguing Sandford.
The film is hilarious in a lot of ways, and extremely deadpan in others. The humor is of the satirical variety apparent in "Shaun of the Dead," but "Hot Fuzz," at least on a technical level, is somewhat edgier and better-written and better-acted (could a sadistic movie villain played by Timothy Dalton possibly be any more over-the-top?). The action scenes are extremely violent and bloody, but is hardly ever really shocking in any way. Action movie fans will have a ball picking out the prods at American action films, which shows to us that the filmmakers certainly know their material quite well.
In the wake of the endlessly maddening cycle of violence plaguing the world at the present, "Hot Fuzz" could easily be accused of being insensitive to current events. But we're forgetting that it's just a movie released at an inconvenient time.
It's just a movie, folks.
10/10