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Released by: Universal Studios
Released on: September 22, 2009.
Director: Edgar Wright
Cast: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jim Broadbent, Kenneth Cranham, Timothy Dalton, Julia Deakin, Patricia Franklin
Year: 2007
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The Movie:
Following up the unexpected but wholly worthy success of Shaun Of The Dead probably wasn't an easy task but Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright proved that lightning can and does strike twice with the even better follow up, Hot Fuzz. A brilliant but loving parody of the Michael Bay style action blockbuster, the picture begins by giving us a brief biography of Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg), a London based super cop whose arrest record is four hundred percent higher than the average. Nicholas is so good at his job that he gets promoted to sergeant… and then shipped off to the small country town of Sandford, Gloucestershire where nothing ever happens. You see, Angel was making everyone else look bad, so rather than rise to the occasion, London's finest decided to get rid of him.
Upon his arrival and after checking in to the hotel where he'll be staying for a while, Nicholas meets some of the locals including the police force he'll be working with. He's partnered up with Danny Butterman (Nick Frost), a chubby dope who has learned all there is to learn about police work from Die Hard, Point Break and Bad Boys II and who admires Nick for his action-intensive ways. Prone to asking dumb questions at inopportune moments, Nick and Danny eventually find a genuine friendship and just in time, as it turns out that something is wrong in the small town. A string of nasty murders leads Nick to suspect local rich guy Simon Skinner (Timothy Dalton) of foul play, but he can't find the evidence that needs to put him behind bars. Thankfully, with some help from his partner, Nick soon finds himself hot on the trail he's been looking for - and Danny couldn't be happier, because that means it's time to break out the big guns and yell 'ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!'
What made Shaun Of The Dead so damn good was the fact that you can't successful skewer the zombie film as well as they did with that picture without having devoured all that it has to offer. The same statement has to apply to Hot Fuzz. These guys were able to shoot holes in the action/cop films because they obviously eat this stuff up and as ridiculous as it all gets, you can tell behind all the jokes that there lies an genuine affection for the material. It's this care and attention to detail that sets those two films apart from Hollywood parody bullshit like Meet The Spartans and the Scary Movie series. Those films feel like fast, cheap cash-in's because they are, whereas Shaun Of The Dead and Hot Fuzz are clever and well written films that do more than just ape famous set pieces from successful box office hits.
There are a couple of pacing problems in the middle of the film where we spend just a little bit too much time watching Nicholas adjust to his new surroundings but that singular complaint aside, Hot Fuzz works incredibly well, even more so than the seemingly more popular Shaun Of The Dead. It's continually funny from start to finish and by so successfully poking fun at the action movie it somehow transcends itself and becomes an entirely successful action picture in its own right. It goes without saying that Frost and Pegg are funny - anyone who has seen their previous work together can tell you that - but the rest of the cast deliver as well, Dalton in particular. Taking that smug 'kiss my ass I'm better than you' attitude he brought to Bond and turning it around and villainizing it was the perfect move, as he's the ideal foil for Angel's super cop character. Dalton fits the role perfectly and you can tell he's having an absolute blast with the material.
Full of references to more action movies than you probably want to count, Hot Fuzz carves out its own killer niche. The movie is not only absolutely hysterical, it's actually tense and exciting as well. It's a rare breed of parody that holds its own against the movies it wants to poke fun at and Universal has seen fit to really roll out the red carpet for its Blu-ray debut….
Video/Audio/Extras:
Hot Fuzz looks pretty damn slick in its original 2.35.1 anamorphic widescreen aspect ratio, presented here in a VC-1 encoded 1080p high definition transfer. The colors tend to run a bit warm in spots, but that's obviously an intentional look on the part of the filmmakers, to give the movie a sort of 'action intensive' look that actually works really well and thankfully doesn't come at the cost of less detail. Skin tones look pretty good, if a bit orange-ish at times, and black levels are strong throughout. There's way more texture to the image here than there ever was on standard definition and the color reproduction is considerably more impressive as well. Fans of the film should be very pleased with Universal's efforts here, as this is a well authored representation of what had to be some very clean source material.
An excellent English 48kHz 1.5 Mbps DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio mix adorns this Blu-ray release, as do DTS 5.1 Surround Sound mixes in French and Spanish. English closed captioning is available as are optional French and Spanish subtitles. The DTS-HD track on this disc is excellent. There's plenty of aggressive channel separation and during some of the more action-oriented moments in the film, especially the last half hour, it's not uncommon to hear all sorts of commotion and gun shots whizzing around your room. Quieter moments use the rears to add ambience in the form of natural room sounds and background noise and by spreading the score out nicely. Dialogue is clean, clear and concise even during the commotion of the fight scenes and the musical score and sound effects never overshadow what's being said on screen. Bass response is terrific and the mix will give your subwoofer something to chew on, especially when weather or battle sounds are being used in the mix. In short, the sound mix is great and the uncompressed audio really bests the Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound track that Universal included on the SD release in pretty much every way you'd expect it to. The finale in particular has a lot of activity with bullets zipping past you all over the place - it adds to the fun in a big way, this is reference quality stuff.
Holy crap - the extras start off with a bunch of commentaries. This is almost overkill, but hey, for those who want it, here it is. The first track is the best of the bunch as it features Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright doing their thing. They talk about the writing process before launching into bits about casting, working in front of and behind the camera, influences, location shooting, and pretty much everything else you could want them to talk about. It's a thorough track, but delivered with a warm sense of humor that makes it very easy to listen to.
The other commentaries are as follows: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jim Broadbent, Rafe Spall, Kevin Eldon, and Olivia Colman are on commentary two, Edgar Wright and Quentin Tarantino are on track three, Kenneth Cranham, Timothy Dalton, Paul Freeman, & Edward Woodward are on track four, and real life cops Andy Leafe and Nick Eckland are on track five. These tracks are a mixed bag. The Tarantino/Pegg chat is surprisingly fun, even if they're not taking anything too seriously, while the track with Dalton and the rest tends to be dry and rather slow. Interestingly enough the discussion with Leafe and Eckland, the cops who helped out by providing research for the film, tends to be worth checking out just because they tell a few cool real world stories here that makes Hot Fuzz even easier to appreciate.
From there we move on to the features starting with the feature length The Fuzzball Rally, which is a seventy one minute documentary that follows Wright, Pegg and Frost they travel all over the place promoting the film over a ten week tour. It's pretty entertaining - if you dig their brand of humor then definitely set aside some time to watch this as you'll likely get a few good laughs out of it. It also lends some insight into the promotional side of the movie business. Oddly enough, the three filmmakers, joined by Joe Cornish, offer up an optional commentary track for The Fuzzball Rally as well, which is again, quite amusing.
In The Evidence Room you'll find an interesting collection of shorter featurettes such as the half hour long Conclusive: We Made Hot Fuzz documentary that is a pretty standard making of documentary that includes the mandatory talking head cast and crew interviews as well as the requisite amount of behind the scenes footage. Speculative: Video Blogs is a collection of thirteen separate shorts that were shot on location and which document the making of the film in a very 'fly on the wall' manner while Forensic: Featurettes is almost forty five minutes worth of more technically oriented behind the scenes material that plays out in eight separate chapters. Here you'll learn about set design, stunts, action choreography and special effects. Photographic: Galleries is a pair of still galleries while Hearsay: Plot Holes And Comparisons is a myriad of segments that fill in the plot holes by way of narrated illustrations. Also in here is some fun segments that explore the film's special effects. Falsified: Dead Right is also in here, and you'll want to check this out as it's Edgar Wright's first ever cop movie from 1993. It's about forty minutes in length and it includes a director intro, explaining that it was made while he was eighteen years old on VHS. It's nowhere near the level of genius seen in Hot Fuzz but it is pretty interesting and it offers what is probably the earliest look at Wright's work. Dead Right features a solo commentary track from Wright and a second commentary track where he's joined by, of course, Simon Pegg.
The Man Who Would Be Fuzz is a short piece that adds nothing due to it's incredible brevity while Hot Funk is a fun four minute collection of profanity laden scenes redubbed for television broadcast sans the nasty words. Danny's Notebook: The Other Side is a strange twenty-one second flip animation cartoon while the additional Video Blogs contains two segments - VW Blogs twenty two minutes of Volkswagen sponsored car-related bits. There are also some podcasts in here, a collection of eleven storyboard galleries, and the interesting Inadmissible: Deleted Scenes which over its twenty minute run time shares twenty-two deleted scenes available with or without commentary from Edgar Wright. Complimenting this is ten minutes worth of outtakes.
Universal has also built in some Blu-ray exclusive U-Control functionality starting with the Fuzz-O-Meter which, when enabled, plays along with the movie as a trivia track. It doesn't offer up much in the way of information that isn't already covered in the numerous featurettes and commentary options but it's a fun diversion. The second U-Control feature is a storyboard bit which will show, in a separate window, some scene specific storyboards for what's playing out on the TV in front of you. Deal breakers? No, but they're a nice touch. Animated menus and a selection of various trailers round out the extra features on this completely stacked special edition. The disc is also Blu-ray Live enabled and is D-Box Motion Code capable for those who like their seats to rumble.
The Final Word:
Universal should be commended for their efforts here. The picture quality is excellent, and the audio is even better and there's a ton of interesting and entertaining extra features that compliment the movie very nicely. The picture itself is a great one, particularly for action movie buffs with a sense of humor. Here's hoping we see more from the Wright/Frost/Pegg triumvirate sooner rather than later. GREAT STUFF!