Sometimes all you need is a right angle

Rating: 6/10 (31 March 2017)

"Hot Fuzz" is a co-production between France, the United Kingdom and the United States of America that resulted in this 120-minute movie in the English language. It was released back in 2007, so it has its 10th anniversary this year. The director is Edgar Wright and I am sure you have already seen something by him. He wrote the script together with lead actor Simon Pegg, who plays Nicholas Angel. So yes despite the several production countries, this is certainly a very British movie. You may have come across Wright and Pegg already in "Shaun of the Dead" or, more recently, "The World's End". But we shall talk about these on another occasion. Now it is all about this 2-hour film we have here. The cast includes several pretty familiar faces like Oscar winner Jim Broadbent or Bond actor Timothy Dalton (looking a bit like Daniel Day-Lewis) as well as Golden Globe winner Bill Nighy. Dalton actually makes for a pretty good villain I must say, a nice positive surprise in here. Pegg is solid and gives the film some dramatic tension while everybody else feels as if they are in it 100% for the comedic approach, so it elevates the level quite a bit and despite initial uncertainty I approve of Pegg here. Nonetheless, it is all about the comedy really. The crime and mystery aspects are there, but they never really work as well as the humor. This is not a problem at all as they never wanted to make these work as well I am sure, in the sense that I don't think they were ever going for the gritty serious crime drama route here.
My favorite scene is probably when Broadbent's character keeps talking about how police officers who make mistakes like speeding or driving under the influence have to make up for it by handing free ice cream to the entire force and that's pretty hilarious. Much funnier than it sounds here. That much is safe. Anyway, Freeman (Martin, not Morgan) who I am usually not too big on and Coogan had a solid little cameo early in the film and it was also one of the better scenes. As a whole, I would say that I very much recommend the first 80 minutes or so until we see all the townsfolk at that ceremony that looks like a black mass or something. Sadly, this is when the film loses a lot of quality afterward. It loses itself in pointless fights, special effects and action sequences while sacrificing the nice tension and approach from the entire almost 1.5 hours before that. I have no idea why they decided to make such a huge break there in terms of tone and atmosphere, but I absolutely do not approve. And this was really a negative deal-breaker for the film. It would so much have deserved a better ending / final chapter. Luckily, everything before that was still good and convincing and entertaining enough that I can give it a thumbs-up, even if it is not as enthusiastically as I had hoped. Watch it though, especially if you like some of the other Wright/Pegg collaborations from before/after 2007. I also have a feeling that we will get a sequel at some point, but we'll see. British movies tend to take their time with follow-up films if we take a look at T2 this year for example. But "Hot Fuzz" is just too popular a film I guess that they never return to the story. Enough now. See it.