Synopsis

Nicholas Angel is the finest police officer London has to offer, with an arrest record 400% higher than any other officer on the force. He’s so good, he makes everyone else look bad. As a result, Angel’s superiors send him to a place where his talents won’t be quite so embarrassing, the sleepy and seemingly crime-free village of Sandford. With garden fêtes and neighbourhood watch meetings replacing the action of the city, Angel struggles to adapt to his situation and finds himself partnered with PC Danny Butterman, an oafish but well meaning young Constable. Just as all seems lost, a series of grisly accidents motivates Angel into action. Convinced of foul play, Angel realises that Sandford may not be as idyllic as it seems. With his faithful new partner in tow, Angel fights to prove his instincts are correct and uncover the truth about Sandford. Is Angel simply losing his mind in the safest, sweetest village in Britain? Or is something far more sinister at work? A small village is about to get some big city justice.

What The Critics Say

"The filmmakers assemble this just like a slick police thriller, with whizzy editing, slick-shadowy production values and over-serious performances. They merrily stir in every conceivable cliché from massive explosions to slo-mo gun battles, somehow achieving understated comedy in an over-the-top style. Almost without cracking a smile, it's thoroughly hilarious." Rich Cline SHADOWS ON THE WALL "Hot Fuzz tackles a new movie genre - actually, and crucially, two movie genres - and mixes in plenty of gags. This is the world of crime and cops. Plenty of irrepressible fun, and big, regular laughs." Peter Bradshaw UK GUARDIAN "The movie, in many ways, is Agatha Christie getting triumphantly buttfucked by Michael Bay. With jokes. And more than a dash of genius. I actually considered going back to see the movie again the same day I first saw it. The movie is just that good, and that funny." Devin Faraci CHUD "I loved every second. I'm a big fan of the three monkeys, Wright, Pegg and Frost, and was thrilled to see them hit the action genre with a sawed-off shotgun. Hot Fuzz is so packed to the gills with gags, jokes and buffoonery that you'll laugh at something, only to double up with laughter at something totally different. You'll hate yourself for missing this. Go see it now, and you might see me there, watching it a second time, laughing and choking on popcorn." MOVIECRITIC "I thought this was really funny, and it's so rare with comedy that you manage to keep that energy level up for the length of the film. I think the world's going to be divided between people who like SHAUN OF THE DEAD best or this and, for me, I'm a "Hot Fuzz" girl. 4 STARS" Margaret Pomeranz ABC AT THE MOVIES

Hilarious from start to finish, thanks to a terrific cast, inventive direction and a brilliantly written script. Pegg is terrific as Angel, getting maximum laughs by playing Angel as stony-faced and humourless as possible. Frost is equally brilliant as his polar opposite, who introduces Angel to the delights of films such as "Point Break" and continually bombards him with inane questions." Matthew Turner VIEWLONDON "The sly comedy, paragraphed at regular intervals by machine-gun editing inserts, moseys along in a style similar to "Shaun of the Dead" for the first hour, though without the laid-back, couch-potato tone that reflected that movie's characters. Pegg is very good at this kind of double-take humor sans the double take, and his chemistry with Frost (which later morphs into a parody of buddy movies) seems effortless. A straight-faced British spoof of everything from Yank crimers and slasher pics to Agatha Christie whodunits and homoerotic U.S. buddy movies." Derek Elley VARIETY "Fuzz’s self-referential style sets up a wondrous arena for preposterous gore, quotable humour, and a prejudice against ‘80s action films that is both affectionate and cruel. Wright’s fetishism for films like "Lethal Weapon", and especially "Point Break", really find an internal logic that is inherent in all of the characters that he and co-writer Pegg have created." Aaron Gibson FILMINK "Fans of Edgar Wright’s SHAUN OF THE DEAD, the wonderfully droll slacker zombie movie, should happily embrace Wright’s new film, which he also wrote in collaboration with his leading actor, Simon Pegg. "Hot Fuzz" is certainly silly, but it’s intelligently, rather wonderfully, silly. 4 STARS" David Stratton ABC AT THE MOVIES "Tired of impossibly quaint English murder-mysteries? Weary of over-the-top action flicks? Then check out "Hot Fuzz", a laugh-out-loud riot of a film that mashes up the two genres into one of the sharpest comedies in years." Samuel Downing YOURMOVIES.AUST

The Inside Story Fans of both the horror and comedy genre will be well aware of who Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright are. Mention their names and the response is an instant, "Shaun Of The Dead" the self-styled romzomcom that Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg co-created in 2004 as a follow-up to their award-winning collaboration on the hugely successful Channel 4 sitcom, "Spaced". It was an instant hit at the box office, grossing £40 million worldwide and won several prestigious industry awards, including Best Screenplay at the 2004 British Independent Film Awards, Best Horror at the Saturn Awards and Best British Film at the 2005 Empire Awards. 'S.O.T.D" also picked up two nominations at the 2005 BAFTA's: producer Nira Park for the Carl Foreman Award for Most Promising Newcomer, while the film itself picked up a nomination for the Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film. All these plaudits, though, gave Pegg, Wright, and their extended creative team, an instant headache: how could they follow it up? The answer, as it turned out, had more than a close link to Wright's past. Growing up in the small city of Wells in Somerset, Wright had been an inveterate watcher of cop movies, often staying up through the night to get his fix. "I didn't have a video recorder until I was 17," laughs Wright. "I stayed up and watched TV. I did have a particular fixation with the cop films, particularly any of the Dirty Harry films, any of the gritty 60’s and 70’s films like "Bullitt" and "The French Connection" and all the 80’s films like "Lethal Weapon" and "Die Hard"." Also a prolific amateur film-maker, Wright parlayed all his knowledge into a cop movie called Dead Right, made when he was just 18. When he and Pegg were discussing their first post-Shaun project, a number of ideas came up, but Wright still had a cop movie itch to scratch and so proposed that they do for the action movie what "Shaun Of The Dead" had done for the zombie movie: strain a particularly American genre through a peculiarly British collander, add several lumps of humour and serve. "There's a great tradition of British crime films, but hardly any British cop movies, so that is what we're hoping to address," explains Wright. "And very few British cop movies actually use the iconography of the uniformed policeman. If you talk to people from other countries, they say, "they're so cute with their helmets and isn't it funny, they haven't got any guns." So how do we a) make a big British genre film about British bobbies and b) how do we get lots of guns into it?" The answer they hit on was to go one bigger than "Shaun Of The Dead" and make a hugely ambitious action movie featuring Pegg in the lead role as crusading cop, Nicholas Angel. Going one better would result in "Hot Fuzz". Once again, as they did with the highly successful "Shaun Of The Dead", Working Title, the production company who brought us such great films as: "Four Weddings and a Funeral", "Fargo", "O Brother, Where Art Thou?", "Billy Elliot" "Love Actually", "United 93" and both Bridget Jones films came on board. "Simon and Edgar pitched the idea verbally and Working Title said yes straightaway, and they started writing" explains Nira Park, (who produced Hot Fuzz with Working Title's Eric Fellner and Tim Bevan, and who also produced both Shaun of the Dead and Pegg and Wright's seminal sitcom, Spaced). "It felt very different this time round knowing that at the end of the writing process the film would definitely be made. With Shaun, we never quite knew and the year after FilmFour (who developed SOTD) collapsed we really struggled to get it financed and it almost didn't get made, so I think knowing that Working Title were behind us from the beginning this time round made it easier." The guys researched their subject by puchasing and watching over two hundred 'cop' films. "It's great buying cop films from HMV and knowing that you can genuinely claim them back against tax!", says Wright. Besides the research factor and the pleasure they received from watching the huge list it gave them a chance to catch up with many of their favourite movies, such as: "Lethal Weapon", "Die Hard", "48 Hours", "The Last Boy Scout", "To Live And Die In L.A.", "Extreme Prejudice", "The Blue Lamp", "Point Break" and "Bad Boys 2". They also took to the beat with local coppa's. "We interviewed lots of officers in London and we also toured about 15 rural stations. We then spent a week interviewing different police officers and that was brilliant because they were so helpful and so candid, and lots of amazing details came out," says Wright. During that research period they also went out on a 'ride along' in a police vehicle. "We were driving down a country lane in Somerset when a voice came over the radio with an alert. The PC stuck on the ‘Blues and Twos’ and we went hurtling down this country lane at 85 mph. Me and Edgar were like ohmigod!", Pegg recalled. With research and a script completed, the next task was to cast the fifty six speaking roles. "We always have a cast in mind," says Pegg. "I remember one day in the green room just looking around and going; 'there's Belloq from "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (Paul Freeman), Mrs. Baylock from "The Omen" (Billie Whitelaw) and "The Equaliser" (Edward Woodward). I was in geek heaven." In "Hot Fuzz", over zelious and over committed Police Officer Sergeant Nicholas Angel (who's arrest record is 400% higher than any other officer on the force) gets the boot from London to a quiet country village of Samford. On unfamiliar turf, he's like a duck out of water. "In all those seminal cop films, someone gets demoted or sent away because they fucked up or killed somebody," Wright says with a laugh. The local officers, led by Inspector Frank Butterman are totally laid back. Their work is made easier by the local Neighbourhood Watch Alliance. "The idea is that in Sandford, alongside the police, you also have the busybody Neighbourhood Watch Alliance," says Pegg. "They're the village elders. Almost everyone in Sandford has a name that relates to outdated country professions such as Hatcher, Shooter, Weaver, etc." "We wanted to build up a sense that it was a village that people never left, that their ancestors had lived there for generations and been those original artisans. We wanted to reinforce the sense that Angel had entered a place steeped in incestuous tradition." In a draw on "Bad Boys", Simon Pegg and Nick Frost play an unlikely buddy team. The actor to partner Pegg in the film was always going to be Pegg's real-life best friend Frost ("Kinky Boots"). "They're just a brilliant comic act on screen, so they have to be buddy cops!", Wright notes. "Not that they're buddy cops all the way through. Nick's character likes Simon from the beginning, it just isn’t reciprocated!" While the character of Sergeant Nicholas Angel is one that creates great hilarity, he is a very straight laced, no-nonsense police officer. "I couldn't rely on any of my tricks with him because he's not goofy," he admits. "He's absolutely focused all the time. You don't see him smile until halfway through the film. He's like a robot," says Pegg. Nick Frost's character PC Danny Butterman is the complete opposite. "It's very easy to write for Nick. I always thought he was the funniest guy I knew. He's a very natural talent and funny and we have a really good onscreen relationship in that we are best friends and can really bounce off each other well." Frost chipped in by revealing he provided the name for his onscreen character. "I came up with the name Danny Butterman. I said I would only do it if I could call him Danny Butterman. It was a name I'd been thinking of, I wrote it down a while ago." The next job on the list was getting Pegg fit for the job, because Nic Angel is a very physical character. "When you write, you're just writing specifically from the point of view of a particular character," he explains. "When I was doubled up in agony because I'd strained both my quad muscles running down the High Street, I was thinking 'you fucking bastard! Why did you write this ten mile chase sequence for Angel!' but at the time of writing you're just thinking about what's going to look good on-screen, you almost forget that it's going to be you who has to do the running." Not so for Frost. "I saw "Bad Boys 2" and that was it," he admitted. Once in the game, Frost loved it. "I love guns. I love rough and tumble. I've been practising being an action hero for twenty five years. It felt great. I always try to take these things in my stride but when you've got two lovely handguns, you’re wearing a flak jacket and your best mate’s beside you, you can't help but walk with a swagger," he says. In fact Pegg and Frost became so attached to their guns they gave them names. 'Emma' and 'Sarah'! As for the locatiions used in the film, shooting started in London and then moved to the much quieter West Country. The quiet, compact, village of Sandford is actually the much larger town of Wells. It also happens to be Wright's home town. Wright spent a fair amount of time greeting old friends, teachers and his visiting parents. "On the first day there, we were doing a night shoot right in the middle of the town square. At 11pm, people were still watching the filming," he remembers. "But by midnight, it was completely deserted. Not just no people but no cars. It was so weird being back in your hometown with it feeling like a massive set because there was nobody there!" And was it true that the locals chipped in and helped with the casting? It seems they did as Wright releates, "the denizens of Wells took it all in their stride, with the local am-dram society helping out when a casting crisis arose at the eleventh hour." The tone of the village of Sandford changes as the film progresses and it's darker side is exposed. "We didn't want to destroy the idyll of the gentle English countryside by having it too over the top right from the start," Wright explained. "The tone shifts slowly. Essentially, the film is structured around the development of Simon and Nick's characters, their relationship is at the heart of the film." It certainly is. There's great chemistry between the two which produces many memorable and very funny moments in "Hot Fuzz". The Verdict "More lethal than "Lethal Weapon". More danger than "Die Hard". More thrills than "Point Break" More firepower than "Assault On Precinct 13". The best buddy teaming since 'Martin and Lewis'. Meet Sergeant Nicholas Angel, the hottest cop on the beat and his plodding partner PC Danny Butterman. They Will have you in stitches. So funny you'll want to race in and see it again. A barrage of cunningly disguised deaths. A massive load of one-liners and send-ups. If you die laughing, don't blame me. Funnier than a jar full of farts unleashed in a classroom. More exciteman and action than a pensioner on Viagra. The police force has never been this dimwitted or, funnier. Double up on your underpants because this is piss your pants comedy. Here comes the Fuzz. "HOT FUZZ"! 4 STARS." Cast & Crew Bytes "HOT FUZZ" stars .......
Simon Pegg ["24 Hour Party People", "Shaun of the Dead", "George A Romero's Land of the Dead", "Mission: Impossible III" and "The Good Night"]; Nick Frost ["Shaun of the Dead" and "Kinky Boots"]; Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA winner Jim Broadbent ["Bridget Jones's Diary", "Iris", "Gangs Of New York", "Vera Drake" and "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason"]; 2005 Evening Standard Film Award and Empire Film Award winner Paddy Considine ["24 Hour Party People", "Dead Man’s Shoes" and "My Summer Of Love"]; Rafe Spall ["Beginners Luck", "Shaun of the Dead", "The Calcium Kid" and "A Good Year"], Golden Globe and EMMY Award winner Edward Woodward OBE ["Breaker Morant", "Sitting Target", "Stand Up, Virgin Soldiers" and "Who Dares Wins"] and Timothy Dalton ["Permission to Kill", "Flash Gordon", "The Living Daylights", "Licence to Kill" and "Naked in New York"] as Simon Skinner.
"HOT FUZZ" was .......
directed by Edgar Wright ["A Fistful of Fingers" and "Shaun of the Dead"]; screenplay by 2004/05 British Independent Film Award and 2005 Empire Film Best British Film Award winner Edgar Wright ["A Fistful of Fingers" and "Shaun of the Dead"] and 2004/05 British Independent Film Award and 2005 Empire Film Best British Film Award winner Simon Pegg ["Shaun of the Dead" and "Free Jimmy"]; director of photography Jess Hall ["Tales from the Reading Room", "Hideous Man", "Stander" and "Son Of Rambow: A Home Movie"]; original music by David Arnold ["Zoolander", "Changing Lanes", "Die Another Day", "Four Brothers" and "Casino Royale"]; production design by Marcus Rowland ["Shaun of the Dead"]; costume design by Annie Hardinge ["Roseanna's Grave" and "Shaun of the Dead"]. Who's Who?

Simon Pegg Nick Frost Bill Bailey Tim Barlow Jim Broadbent Bill Nighy Steve Coogan Kevin Eldon Adam Buxton Olivia Colman Paddy Considine Stephen Merchant Rafe Spall Timothy Dalton Edward Woodward

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Sergeant Nicholas Angel PC Danny Butterman Sergeant Turner Treacher Inspector Frank Butterman Metropolitan Chief Inspector Kenneth Metropolitan Police Inspector Sergeant Tony Fisher Tim Messenger PC Doris Thatcher DS Andy Wainwright P.I Staker DS Andy Cartwright Simon Skinner Tom Weaver

Run Time 121 minutes Rated MA15+ [AUST] Copyright ©2007 - Paramount Pictures - All Rights Reserved Copyright Protected © 2007 - The Movie Pages & Impact Internet Services - All Rights Reserved