Brilliant and absolutely hilarious!

Rating: 9/10 (22 July 2007)

I am such a fan of movies like this! I love black humor comedies. I saw this at the $1 movies a local theater in my neighborhood has on Wednesdays. And I had been going every week for the past three weeks and since most of the movies that were playing were films that I had already seen, Hot Fuzz was pretty much my only choice. And I was in the mood for a comedy too so I decided on this one. I wasn't sure about what the plot involved and I wasn't even sure if I'd like it. I did know it was from the same people who had made Shaun of the Dead. I've only seen bits and pieces from that film. I'm not a big fan of zombie movies so I kind of steer clear from that one. Zombies freak me out! LOL. But I decided to give this one a try anyway. and I'm glad I did! The plot is pretty simple. Nicholas Angel (a brilliant and hilarious Simon Pegg) is a police officer who has just been recruited to the London countryside because his co-workers are jealous of his work. There he finds that the officers in the police force don't take their work seriously and are often very lazy and uninterested in saving lives. They think police work is all fun and games. And Nicholas tries to bring some rules and commitment to the force and do his job. But this little town has a dark, dark secret. There are gruesome murders being committed by a person in a dark hooded cloak. And while Nicholas Angel is interested in capturing this murderer and solving these murders, his fellow co-workers just want to sit back and eat doughnuts.
*****SPOILERS!!!***** But once Nicholas discovers that pretty much the whole town is in a wicked covenant and they all have been committing these murders (just because the victims didn't' live up to the covenant's standards or had some kind of flaw), they start hunting down Nicholas and try to get him to join. But he flees out of town and after a while comes back, armed with machine guns, rocket launchers, shotguns, handguns, grenades, and other weapons and ammunition. He, along with his buddy Danny Butterman (Nick Frost), wander back into town and start opening fire on the town. And come to find out, the whole town starts shooting back! Even the priests and the nuns! This climactic gunfight scene is the best scene in the film, in my opinion. It's hilarious, brilliantly directed and acted, and dark. But what makes it so funny is that no one dies and only a few people get shot in the foot or the hand. But no one gets fatally shot! And then the gunfight moves into a grocery store where they use buggies and boxes of food as weapons too. So freaking hilarious.
This film was brilliant and incredibly funny. Sure, it was a little dumb at times but it was supposed to be!! And like I said before, that gunfight was the best scene in the movie. Even if you get bored in the first half, you should definitely stay for the gunfight. Some of the death scenes were a little gory and graphic, such as a man having a concrete church steeple landing on his head and a woman having a pair of gardening shears stuck in her throat and blood spurting out everywhere. And then that became a joke between the police force "she slipped and fell and landed on her garden shears!" they would say because they didn't' believe there were any murders going on.
Any fan of Shaun of the Dead will enjoy this and even if you haven't seen that film you should see this one if you're a fan of black humor comedies. I'm glad I saw this film and I think it's one of the funniest films I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot of comedies, as I am a huge fan. I was not disappointed in the least with this film and I will own the DVD! Thank you for reading my review!