Danny is enthused but naïve and bombards Angel with questions about his big-city police exploits. Angel's laid-back superior, Inspector Frank Butterman (Jim Broadbent), encourages the newcomer to relax and partners him with his bumbling son, Danny (Nick Frost). He arrives in the village and immediately begins applying the letter of the law to every circumstance. He's so good that his superiors in London have him transferred to the tiny burb of Sandford because his superlative record is making his co-workers look bad. Sergeat Nicholas Angel (Pegg) is the ultimate cop. In the end, Hot Fuzz does for the action comedy what Shaun of the Dead did for the horror comedy. Attempting and succeeding at something more ambitious is the mark of an interesting filmmaker. Given the backing of someone with money, it's easy enough to make those soulless, by-the-numbers comedies and we see a few every year. Often, action scenes are just flashy ways to pad out things between the jokes and the protagonists are thinly drawn caricatures. While there have been plenty of exceptions throughout the years ( 48 Hours, True Lies, and so forth…), the generic action comedy cannot boast either quality. One key element that Wright and Pegg nail is to develop characters we care about and situations that, while not breathtakingly compelling, are at least interesting. Hot Fuzz is a little too long and suffers from a sagging midsection when the level of exposition becomes laborious, but the spectacularly entertaining final 30 minutes compensates for a lot of flaws. Considering their earlier success, it is perhaps unsurprising that they have gotten it mostly right. The team of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg, the guys who combined guffaws and gore in Shaun of the Dead, have elected to follow their offbeat zombie farce with an action comedy. And if the film is slanted toward action, the comedy can feel out of place and, if poorly executed, can kill the momentum. If there's too much humor or the jokes are too fatuous, the action feels extraneous. The problem is evident: comedy and action often war with one another, each trying to steal the spotlight at the expense of the other. It has been remarked by more than one critic that the action comedy can be one of the easiest movies to make poorly and one of the most difficult to make effectively.
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