New spoof comedy Hot Fuzz offers wit, action

Matt Poland Staff Writer

As perhaps the sole opposer to 2004’s spoof-y cult classic, Shaun of the Dead, I entered into Hot Fuzz, Edgar Wright’s follow-up burlesque of Hollywood action flicks, with a bit of trepidation. It’s never easy being the odd man out—especially among a group of geeky film devotees—and I’ve spent more Saturday evenings than I’d care to recount defending my distaste for the film: its inconsistent pacing, schematic setup and uneven sense of humor. I feared that Hot Fuzz would be more of the same, but to my delight, the film offered a great deal of cheeky fun.

To call it superior to Shaun of the Dead would be an understatement; Hot Fuzz provides the sharpest send-up of genre films since Mel Brooks’ heyday. Though it’s been billed as a parody of over-the-top action policers (Bad Boys II, Point Break, and Lethal Weapon are the three directly referenced), the film pays equal (dis)honor to the grisly slasher flicks of the ’80s and the overpopulated whodunits favored by Agatha Christie. In another film, the collision of these disparate genres would be jarring, but Wright weaves their various strands so seamlessly that their coexistence feels natural—less hodgepodge than mélange. Imagine Miss Marple in a Die Hard film, and you’re on the right track.

The film kicks off with overachieving London cop Nicholas Angel (Shaun’s Simon Pegg) banished to the sticks—a punishment for his too-good performance—which have reflected poorly on his idle superiors. Assigned to the sleepy village of Sanford, the overcommitted Angel finds himself with little more to do than chase down the town’s escaped swan. The village’s inspector, Frank Butterman (Jim Broadbent, slumming to great effect), pairs Angel with his son Danny (Nick Frost), a doltish butterball whose role models are the shoot-now-think-later heroes of the cop flicks he venerates. The duo form an odd-couple partnership that anchors much of the film’s comedy. Their mismatched relationship, a stale trope from Hollywood actioners, could have sunk the film into Rush Hour territory, but Wright finds fertile comic ground—and unexpected warmth—in their rapport, thanks in no small part to crafty performances from both Frost and Pegg, who in Hot Fuzz plays the antithesis to his slacker everyman from Shaun. Their chemistry roots the relationship in a reality otherwise absent from the film, and it lends Hot Fuzz the sweetness that it shares with Wright’s earlier parody.

The pair finally finds something to do when a series of murders rocks the quiet town and the duo must investigate Sanford’s residents, an eclectic bunch who are all potential suspects. Portraying the miscellany of townsfolk is an impressive roster of British talent, the best of which is a wonderfully smarmy Timothy Dalton as the village’s sleazy grocer, who suspiciously keep showing up at the scene of the crime. This bit of stunt casting—just one example in a movie that features alums from Raiders of the Lost Ark and the original Wicker Man, not to mention cameos by Cate Blanchett and Peter Jackson—moves the film beyond simple pastiche into a realm of self-reflexive filmdom, a fanboy’s wet-dreamland.

As Nicholas and Danny probe the town in search of clues, the film descends ever further into madcap parody, sending up the bombastic violence of Richard Donner and Michael Bay flicks in a display of pure homage. An apostle of Bruckheimer, Wright orchestrates everything as only a true action aficionado could, and he gets every detail right, from the amplified soundtrack—which makes even the clinking of glasses sound menacing—to the staccato editing, rapid enough to make Tony Scott blush. He even throws in a healthy dose of barely-submerged homoerotic tension; after Nicholas complains he can’t relax, Danny whispers, “I can show you how,” before waiting a beat to reveal his mammoth DVD collection. As it builds toward its hyperbolic finale—a violent orgasm of gunfire referencing everyone from John Woo to John Carpenter—Wright demonstrates a supreme mastery of the ins and outs of these genre films, and his glorious amalgamation and dismantling of their conventions remains this meta-movie’s shrewdest achievement.

Though it comes secondary to the loopy lampoon, the mystery itself is constructed with enough wit to withstand the film’s contorted logic. To be sure, this isn’t Wilkie Collins—hell, it ain’t even P.D. James—but it’s a whodunit in which the revelation of the “who” doesn’t disappoint. In this regard, it puts most contemporary Hollywood films to shame, particularly 2005’s similarly themed Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. In fact, the film’s only shortcoming is its length. With a running time of over two hours, the film suffers from the occasional lag, but it’s so consistently clever from start to finish that you forgive Wright for coasting every once in a while. After all, few films can claim to succeed within one genre; Hot Fuzz excels at a multitude.