Jealous colleagues conspire to get top London cop Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) transferred to a small town. With his new partner (Nick Frost) in tow, Angel realizes (a lot faster than anyone else) that a series of local accidents might be something a little bit more sinister. (imdb.com)

Hot Fuzz was very funny, very entertaining, and very well written. The Brits do it again. The British know tongue in cheek, probably ‘cause they invented. I’m a big fan of films that mock other films (if done right) because it spotlights what’s wrong in most popular film genres such as action and romantic comedy. You can only mock something if it’s predictable, no? Predictability sucks.

Hot Fuzz mocks every American action film (including Bad Boys and Point Break) and does a damned good job of it. The typical action film has excessive violence with shit blowing up unnecessarily, two male colleagues in some sort of policing or government agency butting heads because one is often more capable or serious than the other, but eventually becoming buddies, and some sort of conspiracy that involves crooked cops or government officials. The typical action film also has a very weak romantic element running through it and a very strong sexist or racist element as well. What makes the Brits so fab in my opinion is that they don’t have to go “lowest-common-denominator” to make a film entertaining whether it’s action or drama for that matter. I wasn’t offended in some way or annoyed with some silly romantic subplot I could simply done without. There was a romantic aspect in Hot Fuzz that didn’t run long side the main plaot. Instead, it actually served the plot, moving it along rather than getting in the way of it. Angel’s girlfriend dumps him because he’s “married to the job”. This is just before Angel gets transferred.

Even the gratuitous violence, unlike that I’ve seen in any American action or horror films, though gruesome at times, was light somehow, or rather just ridiculous as if to highlight the ridiculousness of gratuitous violence in general. It was shocking to me mostly because English films specifically tend not to have gratuitous or even non-gratuitous violence except when set before the 1900s. In one scene in Hot Fuzz, a character gets killed by a very large, very pointy piece of a church falling into his head from on high, pointy end first. Quite gruesome, yet just ridiculous…and funny.

Anyway, Hot Fuzz is one of the funniest films I’ve seen in a long time and I would recommend it to anyone who can appreciate a good mockfilm, or anyone who can appreciate British films and humor in general.

• Directing: [rating:4/5]
• Acting: [rating:4/5]
• Casting: [rating:5/5]
• Cinematography: [rating:3/5]
• Writing: [rating:4/5]
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