Hot Fuzz
(Reviewed on 03/28/2007)
The Breakin' the Law ROSSMAN
Have you ever sat down to a Police Academy Marathon (covering movies 1 - 13), and when it was all done thought to yourself, "Gee, wouldn't it be swell if the Brits made a movie like this, only with some real violence, and actual comedy?" Lord knows I have. Every single time TBS dedicates an entire weekend to Police Academy -- every two weeks or so -- and I veg out and watch them all from start to finish; that's what I LUST for. And guess what? My fucking dreams have been answered by the blokes who gave us Shaun of the Dead. Nice.
Not that Hot Fuzz (the film in question) is a remake/rip-off/satire of Police Academy, just that... Well, it does to the "police buddy movie" what Shaun of the Dead did to the zombie movie: it flips convention on its ear, and then shits in its mouth, calling it a little sissy-boy, and then spits in its eyes, stabs it with some scissors right into its chest, and then runs over its quivering corpse a few times in its Bentley. And it's all good.
Not that I was the biggest fan of Shaun of the Dead... Even though I did enjoy it for what it was, it's not something I'd buy myself unless I found it in the $4.99 bin at Wal-Mart -- I'm just not much of a "zombie movie" fan myself. But I did appreciate Shaun's attempt at saving and *guffaw* breathing new life into a worn-out genre. Hot Fuzz was much more up my alley though, seeing as I love the whole idea behind the "buddy cop" flick. One cop's got to be a by-the-book, rarely smiling, straight arrow, wet sock, and a starched-shirt wearing fool, and the other absolutely bat-shit crazy, or a slob, or a crazy slob, or a lazy, crazy, slob, or just funny... And they're both forced to fight crime side by side! Awesome! Buddy cop movies (think Lethal Weapon, Bad Boys, or Red Heat) are usually known for big action, witty banter, and gratuitous violence. Who the fuck doesn't like gratuitous violence? Apparently the guys behind Hot Fuzz love the shit out of it! And this is that story:
Hot Fuzz is about London supercop Nicholas Angel, who's so damn super that he's fucking things up for his fellow officers. Nick is a cop through to his very core. All he ever does is live and breathe his job -- his spare time is spent in training and self-discipline, and even his girlfriend is sick of him and his by-the-book antics. His arrest rate is 400% higher than his co-cops, and his superiors come to the decision that they have to transfer him or else he'll end up making a laughing stock out of the rest of the precinct.
So Nick is shipped off to the quiet village of Sandford -- also known as "The Best Village in Britain" (or at least the most crime-free hamlet in all the Isles) -- and he starts to go stir crazy from the prolonged boredom. True, he arrests half the village on his first day in town, when he's not even officially signed in as a cop, but that was mostly for underage drinking and other harmless shenanigans (like driving while piss-drunk). Anyway, Nick (Mr. Starch and Pressed) Angel is soon teamed up with Danny (big, fat, funny slob) Butterman, and then the hilarity begins.
The first third of the flick is buddy-cop-centric as we follow Nick and Danny on their daily, boring rounds, but then we switch metric gears and find the second act to be a gruesome murder mystery. Soon after Nick arrives in town a bunch of the town's respected citizens start dying in horrible (read "grisly as all fuck") "accidents." Well, the lazy police detectives are willing to write all the deaths off as accidents, but Nick starts to use his uber-cop intuition to see that some naughty monkeyshines by a certain assoholic shopkeeper might be the reason behind the decapitations, explosions and steeple-fallings. Not that the first part of the story was rubbish, but it's this middle third in which things really shine. And splatter. The violence is actually beautiful to behold, and usually hysterically funny. You'll laugh through your pukings when you see this shit firsthand. Hot Fuzz is actually more horrifying than Shaun of the Dead. It is indeed that awesome.
But then comes the final third of the movie: the action, shoot-'em-up-centric portion. This finale is exciting and fun and all, but I don't think they were parodying [everything that Danny had just pointed out were his favorite parts in] other big action movies... It felt a bit like they were just copying scenes from those movies. Let me 'splain: You know how the Zucker Brothers' (and Abrams') early films would take a movie genre, make fun of a certain scene, but add an insanely humorous twist to it? Well, now think of the abysmal Date Movie, or Epic Movie... You know how they'd just take a certain scene from another movie and put it in their movie without any humorous trappings and think that it was comedy gold -- but it wasn't -- it was pure elephant shit instead? Well, the final act of Hot Fuzz wasn't even close to that bad (ugh, seriously, what is?), but it didn't have the flippancy to it that the previous 2/3rds of the movie had. The ending had scenes that were pretty much cut straight out of Bad Boys 2 and Point Break, and they're only played for laughs because the fellas just talked about those scenes earlier. There was really no twist to them, they just do the Bad Boys 2 scenes, if you get my drift. I tried to laugh during these times, but it felt off. Maybe I just missed the point since I'm not British. Which if the case, then fuck it. I'd rather have my gorgeous smile and inability to see the laugh-out-loud hilarity of the final shoot-out in Hot Fuzz than have a grin like a rotten, kicked-in, unpainted, picket fence and "get it."
Once again, the ending wasn't horrid. It was fast and furious and frenetic. And the very very end -- after the ode to Michael Bay was over -- had some good laughs. And let me say that Timothy Dalton makes a most excellent creepy fuck. Much better than he was at Bond. James Bond. That is all.
The Fuzzy CARL
I at first thought this movie was incredibly gay, but it turned out it was just very very British. And then the blood-storm kicked in, and it blew my mind away!
Seriously, the amount of pure, unadulterated, rub-your-face-in-it violence in this thing was exhilarating! Slice! Smash! Crash! Ka-BOOM! Oh man, it had all my favorite forms of death, destruction and dismay all rolled up into one meaty package! The British humor and all wasn't really floating my boat, but this was oodles better than that terrible, lame, gey zombie movie these guys made a year or two ago.
The
MEGAPLAYBOY
Man, movies like this fuck with my perceptions of reality sometimes, bitch. Like, last week I was drivin' my ho-mobile down to the East-sigh-eed to find me some whores for the night, when some black and whites pulled my smart ass over for a busted tail light or somethin' (well, THEY broke the damn thing their damn selves after they ran my ass into the ditch after I tried to get away).
Well, one was skinny and looked like a bad ass, and the other pig was some fat fuck who looked like he still had some jelly donut stains on his shirt from second or third breakfast that morning. I just looked at the jelly marks and then, thinking the portly piggie was the "funny, slob cop" of the two, made a mother fuckin' comment like, "Yo, tubby, you are one fiiiiiiiiine specimen of the Clarke County PD. You must be the mayor's nephew, or the captain's son or some shit. Waitaminute... Does your badge say 'Deputy Perkins?'"
I think that was when the fat fuck grabbed me by the throat and pulled me out of my car with one hand. As I gasped for breath I figured I got my good-cop/bad-cop, funny-cop/serious-cop mixed up, so I turned to the older, (much) thinner bacon machine and said, "Hey, Barney Fife! Would you mind getting this goddamn animal off me before he smells the Twinkie on me that I ate ten minutes ago and tries to suck it out through my lips or somethin'?" Well, that's when that wrinkly old dick-munch removed his night-stick and began beating the bejesus out of me like a Mexican pinata, or a real Mexican.
Later that day I went down to the PD (Ugh, I fucking HATE that place, but the MegaPlayboy just had to protest this indignity!), walked straight up to the gum-smackin' bitch behind the counter, and stated, "Yo, bitch, I gots me something to complain about! Your damn honky cops pulled my ass over for no damn reason other than to steal my cash, take the prostitutes from my back seat, and bogard all my hooch from my trunk! What the FUCK you gonna do about it, WHORE?!" Well, actually, before I even got to "whore" that chunky whore was over the counter, and bashing my head in between the mini-door/partition that led to the back room, and soon all the goddamn pigs in the whole precinct were out there too, kicking, punching, shooting, and bashing my brains in with a fucking fury!
Goddamn movies. Always lying about everything. There's no such thing as a "funny cop." The slobby, fat fucks are just as much of assholes as the skinny, just about to retire ones. Bitches.
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