A Guilty Pleasure
Written: Aug 21 '07
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Product Rating:
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| Bang For The Buck |
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Pros: Tongue in Cheek Humor
Good Action
Abbot & Costello/Odd Couple Charm
Cons: Excessive Gore
Profanity
The Bottom Line: Hot Fuzz is a hilarious film that blends police action with comedy, but comes back with too much gore for my taste.
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| xenoranger's Full Review: Hot Fuzz |
To be honest, Shawn of the Dead was a guilty pleasure. When I heard that Simon Pegg & Nick Frost were teaming up for a second movie, I had no choice but to watch.
Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) is a brilliant officer. He's so good that his dependability makes the rest of his department looks very bad. To cure this, he's shipped off to a rural village that reports no crime in over 20 years. During his first night, he manages to arrest nearly half the town. Come morning, Inspector Frank Butterman (Jim Broadbent) gives him the “We do things a little differently around here” speech. But when people start having accidents, Angel suspects foul play.
So, here's where the film goes right. First off, teaming up Nick Frost with Simon Pegg. Frost plays PC Danny Butterman, who is assigned as Angel's partner. The two have somewhat of an Abbot and Costello charm about them. While Pegg plays the straight man, Frost compliments him with his bumbling. They may be British, but their humor does translate well to American audiences. To provide an obvious villain, Simon Skinner (Timothy Dalton) is always saying the most inappropriate things. From threatening to behead people to describing blatant acts of brutality, Skinner is an eccentric character that you won't soon forget.
The humor was very well played. Not only do you have the bumbling Danny, but with how straight laced Angel is, the Odd Couple charm rears its head once again. Danny is your typical slacker, while Angel is high strung and high maintenance. In addition to this, if you've seen Shawn of the Dead, Frost's character has an obsession with going to the “Pub”. This is a definite reference to Shawn of the Dead, where Frost's character always wanted to go to the “Winchester” (a local bar). There are other cleverly subtle references to Shawn of the Dead, but if you haven't seen it, you may not appreciate them as much. Hot Fuzz takes cues from both Bad Boys II and Point Break. When it finally comes to the action, you can trace everything back to one of the two films. From Angel & Danny wearing the sunglasses from Bad Boys to a scene where one unloads his firearm into the air while yelling. Despite the serious nature of these, it certainly adds to the film's sense of humor.
You can't have a good buddy cop film without a major action scene. Once Angel figures out who did it, you get everything from high speed chases to intense gun battles. Like Shawn of the Dead, what should be very serious, turns out to be tongue and cheek humor.
What I didn't care for in this film was profanity and gore. First off, the film is Rated R. For this reason, it's not something I'd show children. I felt the language could've been cleaned up a bit. This was only minor compared to the gore. Like Shawn of the Dead, Hot Fuzz puts in very graphic mutilations in ways that you don't see them coming. Like a train wreck, I didn't want to see it, but I just couldn't look away. Some of the gore rivaled films like the Final Destination series. Although I generally applaud special effects creativity, this went a lot further than I would've liked to see. It showed a lack of creative filming.
The bottom line here is that Hot Fuzz is hilarious. With an even mix of both humor and action, Hot Fuzz should be on the top of the list for must see films. I would recommend this to older viewers, but it's definitely not a film for children.
Recommended:
Yes
Movie Mood: Funny Movie
Viewing Method: Other
Film Completeness: Looked complete to me.
Worst Part of this Film: Nothing
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Epinions.com ID:
xenoranger
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Location: MN, USA
Reviews written: 347
Trusted by: 21 members
About Me:
Even the things I really enjoy deserve low ratings at times.
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