Hot Fuzz Movie Review0

By Nurul Ain Muzlan Forget sugar, spice and every­thing nice. All you need is some com­edy and action, a dash of hor­ror and a com­bi­na­tion of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg. Mix it up alto­gether, and poof! You have found the per­fect for­mula that will give you a movie expe­ri­ence like never before. Well, as derived from the title of the post, you should know that I’m talk­ing about Hot Fuzz! Clinching the ‘Best Comedy Award’ for both of UK’s National Movie Awards and Empire Awards, this movie will undoubt­edly help to lift that bur­den off your shoul­ders for a moment. Perhaps, even the most depressed per­son in the world can break into peals of laugh­ter. Hot Fuzz is writ­ten and directed by Edgar Wright and together with the lead actor of the movie, Simon Pegg. The movie tells a story of a London police­man, Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg), who is known for his brav­ery and pas­sion for the force with an impres­sive record in the num­ber of arrest he made (400% more than the aver­age). His achieve­ment is so extrav­a­gant that he made the rest of the offi­cers, espe­cially the ones with a higher rank than him, look bad. With such accom­plish­ment, he is given a ‘reward’ by being pro­moted to sergeant, but at the same time, he has to be trans­ferred to Sandford, a small town with a  seem­ingly impos­si­ble low rate of crimes, in order to save his col­leagues’ face. There, he was paired with a police offi­cer Danny Butterman (Nick Frost), who also loves to watch action movies and longed to live a life as por­trayed by those movies. Soon, Sandford faces series of cases where peo­ple died in a tragic way, but were often seen just as another ‘acci­dent’. After thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion and hav­ing weird con­ver­sa­tions with some of the peo­ple there, Angel noticed that these cases were some­how linked in a way or another, and he could feel that some­thing was amiss. He then finds out that there was actu­ally a secret soci­ety with a big plan to keep the town’s name clean and “tran­quil”. With the help of Danny’s ideas gained from the movies he watch, they man­aged to con­quer the whole sit­u­a­tion. The film begins inter­est­ingly with a dolly shot towards an unknown and sil­hou­et­ted character who is walk­ing towards the cam­era. The lack of sound except for the character’s foot­steps helps to build sus­pense in the audi­ence. When the cam­era and the char­ac­ter get close enough, it reveals Nicholas Angel and a close up of his face lin­ger­ing on the screen for a few moments before he flashes his police ID card on the screen. Then, shots of Angel doing his job and the seri­ous mood of music in the back­ground work to trick the audi­ence as though it’s ‘just another cop film’. But, funny expres­sions of Angel and his inter­ac­tion with other char­ac­ters in a humor­ous atmos­phere prove oth­er­wise. The rapid cut­ting of the shots also helps to build the inten­sity and engage our emo­tions towards the begin­ning film. Plus, it helps to con­dense as much infor­ma­tion about Angel as pos­si­ble to allow the audi­ence to know him bet­ter. I think this is a very unique way to intro­duce the main char­ac­ter and the mix­ture of genre of the film to the audi­ence. After all, the intro­duc­tion plays a vital role in influ­enc­ing the audience’s first impres­sion of the film. I love the way Hot Fuzz played around with the character’s traits. For instance, the firm­ness of Angel as a police offi­cer and his dili­gence in his job is made funny by hav­ing him to attend minor and silly cases in Sandford, such as help­ing to catch lose swan and arrest­ing a per­son mim­ing as a statue. On the other hand, the silly and clumsy Danny Butterman then turned out to be a hero at the end. However, despite the con­trast in their char­ac­ter­is­tics, both cer­tainly have good chem­istry between them, espe­cially how they sup­ported each other’s dia­logues through ridicu­lous responses and sar­casm that help to enhance the com­edy theme. What I cer­tainly love about this movie is the dia­logue used, which are orig­i­nal, hilar­i­ous and clever. Perhaps, I think that by sim­ply read­ing the script, you can already laugh your hearts out. Some of the mem­o­rable dia­logues used are in the scene when Angel ques­tions the under­age teenagers in a pub. Not much phys­i­cal action is needed here and the dia­logue is effec­tive enough for the audi­ence to burst into laugh­ter. I also feel that among the other char­ac­ters, Danny Butterman (Nick Frost) stands out and best deliv­ers the dia­logues as he also uses his facial expres­sions that show the dumb­ness of his char­ac­ter. In addi­tion, Danny’s phys­i­cal traits and actions also help to add to the comedic theme. Being an obese police offi­cer, he has a hard time run­ning after the crim­i­nals and often end up stum­bling and being all clumsy, some­thing that is least expected of an ordi­nary offi­cer. Another notable thing about Hot Fuzz is its edit­ing tech­nique. Like the begin­ning of the film as men­tioned ear­lier, the movie uses a lot of rapid cut­ting and lit­tle tran­si­tions, which is effec­tive in keep­ing the audi­ence gripped to the screen. Besides, it helps to shorten the time of the less action-packed and slower-paced scenes, which may oth­er­wise bore the audi­ence. A notable scene in which par­al­lel edit­ing is used when Angel was sup­posed to meet the reporter, Tim Messenger, at three o’ clock sharp also help to build the sus­pense as we can see that Angel is run­ning out of time and Messenger is going to be killed soon. It is hard to find flaws with this movie, as it is really fun to be watched. Perhaps, the only draw­back is that the run­ning time is too long for a com­edy film. This is prob­a­bly because some of the action scenes, such as the shoot­ing scene between Angel, Butterman and the Neighbourhood Watch Alliance mem­bers, were a lit­tle bit too long. Still, it is filled with great jokes to keep it enter­tain­ing. All in all, Hot Fuzz is undoubt­edly an intel­li­gent hilar­i­ous movie. I give it 4 out of 5 stars!