HOT FUZZ

UNIVERSAL

RELEASED 19 January 2007

PC Nick Angel (Simon Pegg) is shipped out of London. The reason? He’s too good. He’s making the rest of the force (or ‘service’ as the annoyingly ‘PC’ PC Angel likes to correct people) look bad. So it’s off to the small, sleepy town of Sandford where the local constabulary seem to take a rather relaxed attitude to crime, and Angel feels like his will to live is about to run out... until a succession of horrific ‘accidents’ re-ignite his crime-fighting prowess. With the ever-willing but slightly thick Danny Butterman (Nick Frost) as his partner, Angel investigates a case that takes him from the tranquility of the neighbourhood watch, to the local Somerfield run by sinister Simon Skinner (Timothy Dalton), and back to the neighbourhood watch again!

Featuring appearances by Bill Bailey, Jim Broadbent, Paddy Considine, Steve Coogan, Martin Freeman, Bill Nighy, and Edward Woodward, this is another fun-packed comedy from the ‘Shaun of the Dead’ team. The humour is very British, and it’s fun to see our ‘cops’ given a bit of ‘glam’. On the down side, the laughs don’t come fast enough (which isn’t helped by the two-hour running time) and the action is boring and extremely brief. The creative team stated they were setting out to make an action movie in the vein of ‘Lethal Weapon’ and ‘Bad Boys’ but in this respect they’ve failed miserably. As a comedy, it works very well. 

THREE OUT OF FIVE