Hot Fuzz (M18)
Simon Pegg/Nick Frost/Jim Broadbent/120 minutes
This flick reunites the team behind Shaun Of The Dead (2004), the cheekily entertaining zom-romcom, or zombie romantic comedy.
Edgar Wright directs and splits writing duties with Pegg, who stars as top cop Nicholas Angel. Frost plays Danny Butterman, the bumbling sidekick.
Angel is reassigned to the quiet town of Sandford after showing up the rest of his city colleagues with his ridiculously superior police work.
But there’s more to Sandford than meets the eye and townsfolk are dropping like flies in what everyone else insists are mere accidents.
Hot Fuzz is both a loving send-up of, and homage to, macho cop flicks such as Bad Boys II (2003) and Point Break (1991).
It starts promisingly enough, but the overlong and wildly uneven film inexplicably veers into video-game shoot-’em-up territory in its final 30 minutes.
The disc comes with a number of bonus features, though most are short throwaways. There is also a commentary by Pegg and Wright, which helpfully points out Cate Blanchett in an uncredited cameo.
Someone once asked why was it that English villages in the movies were always full of quaint and quirky charm while American small towns were always seething with intrigue and conspiracies.
Well, Hot Fuzz should even the score a bit.
(ST)