Thursday 15 February 2007

Hot Fuzz

Hot Fuzz was excellent- much better than I expected. The only bits of trailer I had seen involved Simon Pegg and Nick Frost jumping over/ crashing into those fences. Which was very funny, but hardly an action-packed highlight.
Similarly, the film starts slow, with Pegg's character being moved from the Metropolitan Police Service (not Force!) that he loves so much to a station in the countryside.
For the first twenty minutes or so, there are so many cameos it's almost distracting, Steve Coogan, bloke from The Office, bloke from Love Actually, Bill Bailey, woman from Peep Show... I could go on and on. The story is reasonably slow to start but I liked the gentle introduction of Pegg's character and his kicking all the underage kids out of the pub and arresting half the people in town (i.e. four) on his first night.

It is in the second half of the film that it really kicks off though, with some fantastically gory deaths and lots of kindly-executed cop-film spoofing (Point Break is genius). The action in the last hour of the film is really fast-paced, genuinely exciting as well as clever and funny throughout.
I won't ruin it by going into grand detail because I hate reviews that do that, but genuinely go and see it. I was expecting a sub-par Shaun of the Dead, and this film isn't quite as good, but it is loads and loads of fun. Long may the partnership of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost continue.

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