Hot Fuzz delivers - more than expected
Written: Jun 17 '07 (Updated Jun 17 '07)
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Product Rating:
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| Bang For The Buck |
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Pros: Fantastic Script + Great Performances by the entire wonderful cast, Very funny and entertaining
Cons: None - unless you consider some random gore a con.
The Bottom Line: Hot Fuzz is a great, entertaining comedy combining gags, physical comedy and some outstanding and intelligent satire. A wonderful cast really delivers on a well-written script.
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| WhtdoIKnow's Full Review: Hot Fuzz |
For a change “Hot Fuzz” delivered much more than its marketing promised. This was a very pleasant surprise and in sharp contrast to another recent example of film marketing/reality, the very poor "Fracture" hence a pair of new reviews based on this premise.
I was on the fence about “Hot Fuzz”. I did like the “Sean of the Dead” team involved. However, that opinion was just based on the one prior film (and we know how that can steer you wrong) and the ads and trailer for Hot Fuzz were not really encouraging. The superficial material just looked loud and potentially annoying with the one main gag depicted involving the Laurel and Hardy aspects of the leads – i.e basically a fat guy joke. Anyway, wonderful daughter was in town for a visit and a big “S of the D” fan so we thought we’d give it a try. Our whole family really loved the film. I think it is quite a bit better than “Sean...” and shows some real promise for this team for the future.
Hot Fuzz is actually one of the best-made, most savvy comedies to come out in the past couple of years – and that’s saying something in my book with a lot of good competition. It is a winning combination of great gags and physical humor as the icing on a very well-written and presented example of classic British satire.
As you may imagine from the film's marketing, one thing being sent up here is the modern American over-the-top police "Action Film." The Metropolitan Police Force is a perfect venue for this and watching our hero go from a straight-laced, by-the-book "Bobby" to a raving, gun-blazing Michael Bay maniac is great fun. However, at the same time, the film goes after another obvious target: the bucolic fantasy of small-village British life. The basic story is like an Agatha Christie novel gone very wrong (and very funny) revealing the seamy underbelly of a picture-postcard English village.
The village is brought to life by a fabulous British ensemble cast. Pretty much everyone in the current rotation was called in from Bill Nighy and Martin Freeman to old pros like Jim Broadbent and, stealing the show, Timothy Dalton as an unctuously smarmy local businessman. Most of the film is a well-paced, thoughtfully satiric look at this dull-as-ditchwater village where our heroic copper has been sent to vegetate - that is until a series of wild serial killings start to occur. If you saw "Sean of the Dead" you know that Wright and Pegg are not averse to throwing some blood and guts around and "Hot Fuzz" has some surprisingly gory scenes. This was all very cartoonish and I thought added some extra spice to the overall mix. I'm already planning a church tower masonry Halloween mask for this year!
One great gag after another is delivered and the film convincingly builds to a hilarious and action-packed finale. These guys have a definite talent for writing good comedy with over-the-top situations and characters that always remain convincingly human and believable. So, Hot Fuzz was really one of the pleasant surprises of the year - a film that delivered much more than promised. It was an outstanding effort and I felt a solid advance from Sean of the Dead. We've hopefully got a lot to look forward to from this team in the future and I for one will be watching for what they do next.
Recommended:
Yes
Movie Mood: Funny Movie
Viewing Method: Other
Film Completeness: Looked complete to me.
Worst Part of this Film: Nothing
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Epinions.com ID:
WhtdoIKnow
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Location: Maplewood, NJ
Reviews written: 87
Trusted by: 10 members
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