That's POLICE OFFICER to You, Mister!

Movie Review
Hot Fuzz
Directed by Edgar Wright

It's amazing how you can discover good movies out of nowhere. To be fair, a lot of other people might have discovered this movie sooner than I did and were already talking about it. But, well, I wasn't expecting this much fun and quality when I chose this movie out of the list of in-flight movies available during my flight from Singapore to Manila last Tuesday.

At first I didn't realize it, but this movie's style brings to mind another movie that I watched quite awhile ago but I couldn't bring into mind what it was. Thanks to IMDB.com, I found out what it was. Just read the title of this review and you know which movie I'm talking about. Turns out that the director was the same. Those who are fans of the zombie genre and British comedy might have known a movie called "Shaun of the Dead" from a couple of years back. Wright's take on the zombie movie genre, with a lot of wacky and decidedly British sense of humor, was a fun and entertaining piece. The movie will either make you grin like a fool or plain burst out laughing.

Yes, I was talking about "Shaun of the Dead." However, this review is not about "Shaun", right? But you might as well talk about "Shaun" when you talk about "Hot Fuzz". The camera style is the same, the action's style is the same, the sense of humor is the same, the story...well, of course they're different but still in the same vein as "Shaun". To top it off, even the 2 main characters are played by the same actors as those who played the 2 main characters in "Shaun" (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost). And what's more, Bill Nighy made an appearance in both movies.

The story itself is about a serious cop, Nicholas Angel (Pegg), who got transferred from London to a small countryside town called Sandford for being overzealous in carrying out his duties as a cop (Angel would voice his objection, saying that it's "Police Officer" and not "cop"). Everything seems to be normal in the small town until a series of unfortunate incidents where people got killed occurred. With the help of Danny Butterman (Frost), a bumbling but sincere local police officer, Angel tries to uncover the truth behind these bizarre incidents.

Pegg and Frost are the stars of the show, with Pegg being the straight guy and Frost delivering many of the punch lines. Pegg portrays quite an interesting character, a serious cop who's serious about what he does, but has a knack of being gullible at the same time. Frost's character, meanwhile, is more or less like Ed from "Shaun". Special mention must also be made of Timothy Dalton, who plays the "obviously-the-villain-of-the-movie" character, Simon Skinner. How can he not be? With that dashing smile, thin mustache, and squinting eyes, his character screams "villain!" from a mile away.

It is clear that, while "Shaun" pokes fun at the zombie/horror genre, "Hot Fuzz" pokes fun at the cop genre, putting every element from this genre to the extreme, albeit in a humorous and entertaining way. They even put references to other well-known cop movies, some of them subtle; some blatantly obvious. The story itself is nicely paced, and the plot twists are out of the ordinary yet entertaining. You'll be guessing from start to finish, but I find that it's not about knowing who the bad guy is. This movie is all about the jokes and the many silly spin-offs they made out of the cop genre.

So, for those of you who enjoyed "Shaun", or fans of the cop action movie genre or British black comedy in general, or can appreciate all of these, then you definitely don't want to miss out on "Hot Fuzz".