Miles on Movies

Hot Fuzz
(2007)

The same duo who made “Shaun of the Dead”, Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg, take
on the Police Action genre. “Shaun of the Dead” is possibly the greatest
comic zombie cannibal film ever made. Actually probably the only funny
zombie cannibal movie ever made. Well, there’s Robert Rodriguez’s
contribution to “Grindhouse” and George Romero includes moments of sick
humor in his oeuvre, but “Sean of the Dead” is consistently hilarious, as
well as touching, unlike Romero’s totally gross out Ûr-Work, and Rodriquez’s
creep-out effort.

“Hot Fuzz” is a hilarious romp, with a super cop character shipped out to
the sticks because his one man war on crime is so efficient and effective
that he’s making all the other Bobbies look like slackers. In the quiet
rural town where he is exiled he can’t relax and leave well enough alone and
soon starts to uncover the seamy underside of British rural life. The action
packed ending is one of the best send-ups of boring middle class culture
I’ve ever seen!

Someone I spoke with felt that the sidekick character, played by Nick Frost,
didn’t work as well in “Hot Fuzz” as he did in “Sean of the Deceased” but
that wasn’t my experience.

If you like taking the piss of conventional conservative society, you’ll
love the denouement here.

And Bill Nighy has a cameo as Metropolitan Chief Inspector Kenneth that
continues to show why he’s the hottest actor on the English and American
market these days. It’s kind of cool when a veteran art theater actor makes
it commercially. So many don’t.

William P. Meyers adds: I enjoyed this movie too. It has a classic horror outline. Everything is nice, near perfect, on the surface. Hints of problems grow to the point that one character can't ignore them. Then the sham of ordinary life is stripped away and the horror of reality is unveiled. And yet it is, at times, quite funny.

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