What’s covered with fuzz, blazing hot, British, and unexpectedly funny?
There are two possible answers to this question: the first is a Teletubbie on fire; the second is the movie Hot Fuzz, starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost the duo of Shaun of the Dead fame.
The term “hot fuzz,” (for all of you uncouth Yanks), is a modern British slang term for policeman (forget “bobby”; that went out of favor a few decades ago along with parachute pants and Saturday Night Fever medallions). Predictably, Hot Fuzz features British policeman; however this is definitely not just Lethal Weapon with a posh accent. Hot Fuzz is wittier and brainier, with enough action to make Jason Bourne pause to take notes, and enough gun-slinging to make Charlton Heston sigh with pleasure in his grave.
Constable Nicholas Angel (played by Simon Pegg, the endearingly dunderheaded Shaun in Shaun of the Dead) is the ideal police officer: he graduated top of his class and has an arrest record 400% higher than any other officer in the Metropolitan Police Force; he has received 9 commendations in the last year; he devotes every waking moment to his job and to the upkeep of his beloved Japanese Peace Lily. If anyone deserves promotion to sergeant, it is Constable Angel.
His superiors agree wholeheartedly—as long as the newly sergeanted Angel is as far away from them as possible. “You’ve been making us all look bad,” explains Nicholas’s Chief Inspector (portrayed by a perfectly tongue-in-cheek Bill Nighy). Which is why Nicholas is being shunted away from London to the small country town of Sanford, Gloustershire, a town that has not only the lowest crime rate in all of England, but has repeatedly been awarded Village of the Year for its straight-out-of-a-PBS-special quaintness.
The police force Sergeant Angel meets when he arrives in Sanford is like something out of a Fawlty Towers episode: an incomprehensible elderly constable with an omnipresent dog; detectives who are incapable of detecting anything but the location of the nearest pub; one Doris Thatcher, the only police woman who, as she meaningly informs Nicholas has “been around the station a few times”; and the bumbling Danny, the Chief Inspector’s son (played by Nick Frost, the erstwhile lazy Ed in Shaun of the Dead).
To Danny’s delight (and Nicholas’ quiet horror) the two are paired together. They spend their days trolling Sanford’s picturesque streets for shoplifters, wayward schoolkids, and cars going 48 in a 30 zone.
Before long, however, Sanford is up to its window boxes in dead bodies—all “accidents” the police officers in the Sanford Police Station insist, but Nicholas is convinced they are the work of a murderer. Together, he and Danny embark on a mission to unravel the large number of horrific deaths that plague Sanford.
Hot Fuzz is a gem of a movie; you could watch it 100 times and see something new to laugh at every single time. From the first few minutes when the perfect Nicholas Angel is introduced (to the strains of Adam and the Antz “Goody Goody Two Shoes”) to the wild car chases and gun fights at the climax, Hot Fuzz is simultaneously amusing, thought-provoking, and brilliantly filmed.
Don’t be put off by the movie’s beginning; o.k., so there are no guns fired in the first hour or so, but the witty humor should keep any viewer with half a brain more than occupied before the blood, guts, and bullets begin flying.
Fans of Shaun of the Dead will find Hot Fuzz delightfully packed with hilarious moments directly referencing Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s first movie. Watch Hot Fuzz with a fellow Shaun of the Dead devotee and you’ll find yourselves dissolving into helpless mirth every 15 minutes; watch it with a neophyte and you can experience a glow of superiority as you chuckle knowingly while they sit in wondering and deferential silence.
Unlike Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz is surprisingly restrained in its use of expletives. While in Shaun of the Dead curse words served as verbs, nouns, and adjectives in ways that would puzzle grammatical pandas who eat shoots and leaves, Hot Fuzz utilizes them only in moments of duress, like for instance when you see someone’s head being blown apart.
Hot Fuzz also speaks to us aging Generation X-ers: when we hear a song by Adam and the Antz or Nicholas and Danny exclaim “By the power of Greyskull!” we are immediately transported back to the innocent days of Velcro Reboks and pigtails, long before the evils of 9/11, ipods, and Hannah Montana.
Hot Fuzz may be commercially negligible, but it is a brilliant movie. Watch it, as well as its predecessor Shaun of the Dead, so you can be first on the bandwagon when Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s next movie makes the big time.