Now Playing: Hot Fuzz

Now here’s what I was trying to get at in my Grindhouse piece. Rather than bog down precisely replicating the feel of the movies it’s honoring, Hot Fuzz stripmines B grade action movies and converts the tailings into gold. It trades up. For instance, the movie calls out a cheesier moment in Point Break, when Keanu’s man-crush gets the better of him and he can’t bring himself to shoot Swayze, instead unloading his clip into the sky. Then it flips the moment so nicely that when Danny (Nick Frost) can’t bring himself to shoot his father and empties his pistol with an “Aaargh!” it’s heartfelt and hilarious at once.

As in Shaun of The Dead, there are some fun supporting performances turned in here: an over-the-top Timothy Dalton, a deadpan Martin Freeman (of the BBC’s “The Office”), Steve Coogan, perfectly oily as usual, and Bill Nighy defines Crypt Keeper cool.

I’m really looking forward to watching this one on DVD with subtitles. It’s not that the accents are too thick, just that the pacing and colloquialisms are rewardingly unrelenting. Close attention pays off as the jokes come over the wall like rage-infected Mongols.

My one beef with the movie is that the whip-pan smash-cuts that were so fun in Shaun of The Dead become a wee bit tedious here. And the sound effect track is way too loud. This movie doesn’t require a big screen to maximize its’ entertainment potential (more on this later), so I recommend you wait until it comes out on DVD and you can control the volume yourself.

And, oh hey, check out this fun article tracing the references of a few of the Hot Fuzz posters out there. Good stuff, love the Dirty Harry.