Edgar Wright
Hot Fuzz

THE REVIEW

Ingredients: take a cauldron, fill it with blood or, if you don't have any, water will do. Put it on the stove at scorching heat and let it boil. Done? Good, very good. Now toss in a bit of Die Hard, a bit of Lethal Weapon, a few drops of Bad Boys 2, a couple of pieces of Point Break, and season it all with some B-movie horror. Done? Okay, now just parody the result with a touch of healthy English humor and you're all set. The game is Hot Fuzz, the second feature-length film by the promising and talented director of Shaun of the Dead, Edgar Wright. Edgar Wright is someone who has surely devoured directors like Raimi, Ritchie, the Monty Python, Romero, and why not, even Tarantino.

Hot Fuzz is a delightful pastime, entertaining, at times hilarious, filled with edge-of-your-seat scenes and black humor, which in many moments reaches splatter, without ever being vulgar or trivial.

The story recounts the adventures of the super-cop from London, Nicholas Angel (an excellent Simon Pegg), who, due to his excessive zeal, is sent to a quiet little village in the English countryside to calm his boiling spirits and his wild urge to arrest anything that moves.

Naturally, the village is not as quiet as it seems, and our hero will soon have to solve numerous murder cases to uncover the terrible truth hidden by the inhabitants. The locals initially seem like unbearable caricatures straight out of a Mulino Bianco commercial, but soon they reveal themselves as ruthless murderers.

The local police force is excellent, utterly absurd and lazy, intent on making Angel's life a living hell until our hero, backed by the inept/drunkard/idle cop Danny (Nick Frost, the ideal sidekick), will manage to convince his colleagues of the twisted conspiracy moving beneath the village's surface. These failed flatfoots, suddenly, transform into improbable war machines (and here the references to the aforementioned films abound, the memorable "Godzilla-like" fight at the end).

The plot is a gigantic nonsense and the entire film is devoted to exaggeration, parody, and the most farcical referencing, perfectly achieving the feat of entertaining from beginning to end. I would define it as a "falsely" trashy film. The direction is highly competent and acrobatic. An excellent divertissement... certainly for the actors and director, and certainly, provided we engage the childlike part of our brains, also for us viewers.