A review I wrote for the paper that I contribute to.
Hot Fuzz gives us big city hot shot Nicholas Angel, who is the thorn in his bosses side. His flawless profile and insanely high arrest record makes the rest of the force look bad in comparison. To get rid of him they ship him off the Sandford, dubbed the safest village in the country. Here they roll out every archetypal village yokel and country bumpkin that you can imagine. Caricatures they may be, but riotously funny. More so that Angel, who is something of the anti-Shawn, which is a shame. As the reluctant hero of their cult smash Shawn Of The Dead, Pegg was the frustrated everyman that was all of us. In contrast Angel is so straight laced and bland that it is hard to live and breathe him.
That is until Nick Frost saunters in. Frost and Pegg have been working together for so long that the chemistry they enjoy together on screen is not a lesson in acting, its 100% genuine and gives the comedy a sense of effortlessness. Angel shows that the straight man is certainly not Pegg's strength, but when him and Frost are together it works brilliantly. As Angel struggles to settle into his new environment he discovers something sinister about this sleepy little town.
What they essentially deliver is three distinctly different ideas that follow the traditional three act structure in sequence; a fish out of water comedy, a dark mystery in the vein of ham horror, and an unashamedly over the top action film. While these come together to tell a single cohesive story, they never quite gel together which can lead to a slightly jarring effect as the mood jumps around in style and tone.
Chiefly the culprit is act number two, the mystery portion, which is mostly gag free, flabby and combined with a trim here and there elsewhere, is 25 minutes that the film certainly could do without and be better for it. Without this sagging interlude, the film is a dazzlingly stylized first third, with Wright dancing the camera around, highlighting the hilarious banality and ensuring that what is on paper mostly set up is never dull for a moment. After that it sags horribly until the action sets in and its a race to the finish with some blistering set pieces and dizzyingly glorious editing.
The pressure to deliver in the wake of Shawn has clearly played on their minds. Trying to balance the gags with the correct amount of clever writing, combined with some action sequences that would make the likes of Michael Bay sit up and take notice, they are showing us they can do a little bit of everything. That will undoubtedly be great for their future, but in the short term it hurts this particular film. Not to say that the film is not very enjoyable, because it is, but it is far from the triumph that it could have, and perhaps should have been.
Hot Fuzz gives us big city hot shot Nicholas Angel, who is the thorn in his bosses side. His flawless profile and insanely high arrest record makes the rest of the force look bad in comparison. To get rid of him they ship him off the Sandford, dubbed the safest village in the country. Here they roll out every archetypal village yokel and country bumpkin that you can imagine. Caricatures they may be, but riotously funny. More so that Angel, who is something of the anti-Shawn, which is a shame. As the reluctant hero of their cult smash Shawn Of The Dead, Pegg was the frustrated everyman that was all of us. In contrast Angel is so straight laced and bland that it is hard to live and breathe him.
That is until Nick Frost saunters in. Frost and Pegg have been working together for so long that the chemistry they enjoy together on screen is not a lesson in acting, its 100% genuine and gives the comedy a sense of effortlessness. Angel shows that the straight man is certainly not Pegg's strength, but when him and Frost are together it works brilliantly. As Angel struggles to settle into his new environment he discovers something sinister about this sleepy little town.
What they essentially deliver is three distinctly different ideas that follow the traditional three act structure in sequence; a fish out of water comedy, a dark mystery in the vein of ham horror, and an unashamedly over the top action film. While these come together to tell a single cohesive story, they never quite gel together which can lead to a slightly jarring effect as the mood jumps around in style and tone.
Chiefly the culprit is act number two, the mystery portion, which is mostly gag free, flabby and combined with a trim here and there elsewhere, is 25 minutes that the film certainly could do without and be better for it. Without this sagging interlude, the film is a dazzlingly stylized first third, with Wright dancing the camera around, highlighting the hilarious banality and ensuring that what is on paper mostly set up is never dull for a moment. After that it sags horribly until the action sets in and its a race to the finish with some blistering set pieces and dizzyingly glorious editing.
The pressure to deliver in the wake of Shawn has clearly played on their minds. Trying to balance the gags with the correct amount of clever writing, combined with some action sequences that would make the likes of Michael Bay sit up and take notice, they are showing us they can do a little bit of everything. That will undoubtedly be great for their future, but in the short term it hurts this particular film. Not to say that the film is not very enjoyable, because it is, but it is far from the triumph that it could have, and perhaps should have been.
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