Fresh from their successful comedy horror classic Shaun of the Dead, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost reunited last year for Hot Fuzz. A cult film that was a big hit in Hollywood, Shaun was a hard act to follow, but Pegg and Frost made a convincing stab at it with this surreal suburban police comedy, co-written by Pegg and director Edgar Wright.
Met cop Nicholas Angel (Pegg) is so good at his job that he's making everyone else look bad. So when his arrest record hits 400 per cent, crafty Chief Inspector Kenneth (Bill Nighy) assigns him to another division - the sleepy village of Sandford.
At first glance, Sandford is a do-gooders' heaven and Angel is going to have nothing more to deal with than daft PC Danny Butterman (Frost). But when a string of grisly deaths rock the village, Angel begins to suspect that there's more to this rural idyll than meets the eye...
Unusually Pegg plays it fairly straight as Angel, but he works well as a comic foil once he teams up with Frost as bumpkin Butterman. And there's good support from a solid cast, including Martin Freeman, Bill Bailey, Edward Woodward and Timothy Dalton.
Highly recommended.
Did you know? Sandford, the fictional setting for the film, was actually the name of a police training village in Cheshire, used to simulate routine police activities. Hot Fuzz wasn't shot there; it was filmed in Wells in Somerset, where director Edgar Wright grew up.
Although this film has some really good funny bits, I dont think there are enough to call it a funny film. Which is a shame because it would have been its only saving grace, as it turned out it ended up more like a really bad action film that has moments of comedy but the rest is just plain stupid.
(2007) (UK / France) 
(4 Star)
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