Film review: Hot Fuzz

This review was written by my friend Thomas Neumark. Visit his blog Breaking Kayfabe, and/or watch his stand up here.

My favourite thing about going to the cinema is trailers. Now the trailer for Hot Fuzz was nothing that special but this didn’t necessarily dampen my spirits. You see the reason I like trailers is not the same reason that I like movies. Before Hot Fuzz there was a trailer for the movie 300. That’s the kind of trailer I really like. The plot is 300 Spartan warriors against one million invading soldiers. One million! And it looks like they put up a good fight. The breathy voiceover may well have said something along the lines of “destiny has got a new six-pack”.

My second favourite thing about going to the cinema is the ludicrously overblown advert style thing for Dolby Surround sound. It is done on CGI as though it’s going to astonish us in anyway. What kind of country-fried rube is impressed by this kind of stuff these days? I mean we’re living in a world that has produced xtube (a pornographic version of youtube), Technicolor doesn’t cut it anymore.

Hot Fuzz itself was excellent. There are a series of excellent turns from the great and the good notably Bill Bailey and Timothy Dalton who needs to give back all those scenes he stole. Pegg and Frost’s dynamic is once again subtly (ever so subtly) different to their previous pairings. This time is much more homoerotic: my favourite kind of erotic.

The tone of the whole thing is, like Jesus Christ, slightly hard to nail down. At some points it is almost Airplane like in its pastiches and references, at other times, especially in the last half hour, the action is a lot more convincing, nearly as good as the fabled Bad Boys II which is a constant reference point for some reason.

Ultimately if you’re the kind of geek who is reading this you will be most interested in whether Hot Fuzz is better than Shaun of the Dead. Yes it is. I didn’t find the romantic story line particularly compelling in Shaun whereas giving Pegg and Frost a hint of the gay along with their wonderfully silly banter makes Hot Fuzz “better than Shaun of the Dead”, there I’ve said it.



[download David Arnold - Theme from Hot Fuzz]