Movie Review Hot Fuzz

Hot Fuzz (2007) 

Directed by Edgar Wright 

Written by Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg

Starring Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Timothy Dalton, Cate Blanchett, Jim Broadbent 

Release Date April 20th, 2007 

Published April 19th, 2007 

The buzz has been building for months around the action comedy Hot Fuzz. It comes from the creators of the cult hit Shaun Of the Dead, a film that was both a send up of classic zombie flicks and a reinvention. Now the Shaun team takes aim at the classically American action movie. With nods toward Point Break, Bad Boys 2 and even a glance at Chinatown, Hot Fuzz fires bullets in many different directions, blows up any number of locales and is often quite funny while doing it.

If it were just about 30 minutes shorter, Hot Fuzz would be a very cool movie.

Nicolas Angel (Simon Pegg) is the best cop in London. His arrest rate is 400 percent higher than every other cop in the city and he is making the other cops look bad. In order to lower the bar for the rest of London's finest, Nicolas is given a transfer. Sent to the tiny village of Sandford, the big city cop finds himself in the place known as the safest village in all of England.

Left busting underage drinkers and tracking down a swan on the loose on mainstreet, Nicolas is bored to tears. Lucky for him, the exciting stuff is just about to begin. As the town prepares for the annual village of the year contest a strange series of accidents kills off some of the more troublesome residents of Sandford and Nicolas begins to wonder if all of these accidents could really be just a coincidence.

That is the set up to a story that takes absolutely forever to really get going. Written and directed by Edgar Wright, with his team from Shaun Of The Dead, Hot Fuzz tries to have it both ways and be taken seriously in an action thriller vein and be funny in sending up American action cliches. The tone of the film is fuzzy, even employing some horror film style violence among the mystery and action elements, and this causes the film to drag through the first 90 minutes or so.

Simon Pegg never really looks like an action hero but throughout Hot Fuzz, in what I'm sure was meant as parody, Pegg becomes so taciturn and earnestly tough that he becomes nearly convincing. Pegg gets really into the role of a badass, by the book cop and his performance is yet another confused piece of satire in Hot Fuzz. Don't be mistaken, Pegg is often quite funny but the character is at times too convincing which undercuts the humor in many scenes.

The last half hour of Hot Fuzz nearly rescues the picture. Taking cues from Bad Boys 2, Point Break and Rambo, Hot Fuzz starts blowing up anything and everything, firing copious amounts of bullets and celebrating the goofball quipfests that are the hallmark of the 80's and 90's style American action movie. When the trailer says "from the guys who saw every action movie, ever made" they aren't kidding.

Though multiple homages to Point Break seem a little curious and out of date, fans of that Keanu Reeves-Patrick Swayze campfest will be rolling on the floor laughing. That film, for all its cheese-tastic goodness, did feature one of the best foot chases in any movie I've ever seen and Hot Fuzz provides a loving and hysterical send up of that scene.

Another great popcorn aspect of Hot Fuzz is the filmmaker's Where's Waldo approach to celebrity cameos. A pair of big name international stars, an Academy Award nominated actress and an Academy Award winning Director, are hidden in plain sight in Hot Fuzz. You may have to see the film more than once to catch both cameos.

As a movie geek myself I was looking forward to Hot Fuzz. I loved Shaun of the Dead and that film definitely showed Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's brilliant talent for sending up conventions of genre. They are just slightly off the beat in Hot Fuzz. Taking themselves just a tad too seriously, the team behind Hot Fuzz manages to make a real action movie early on and then flex their parody skills at the very end. These are some big laughs but the more than 90 minutes it takes to get there are deathly dull at times.

Movie Review: The Tourist

The Tourist (2010)

Directed by Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck 

Written by Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck 

Starring Johnny Depp, Angelia Jolie, Paul Bettany, Timothy Dalton, Rufus Sewell 

Release December 10th, 2010 

Published December 9th, 2010 

The novelty of placing pop culture icons Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp in the same movie is nearly too much of a burden to bear for the slight, off-beat, spy comedy "The Tourist." Director Florian Von Donnersmark, in his English language directorial debut, takes on the Herculean task of capturing these two supernova stars in the same shot and not having the camera overload from all of the star power.

"The Tourist" stars Johnny Depp as Frank a mild mannered Wisconsin school teacher who finds himself whipped into a world of intrigue, adventure and danger when he is approached by an unbelievably beautiful woman on a train ride from Paris to Venice. Her name is Elise and her extraordinary calm while picking up this odd stranger on a train is quite unsettling.

Upon arriving in Venice Elise absconds with Frank's bags thus forcing him to join her at her high dollar hotel, not that he really needed to be kidnapped. Frank will be Elise's date for the evening while she awaits the arrival of her loutish, criminal lover who, unknown to Frank, urged her to find a tourist who looks a little like him and frame that tourist while he and Elise make their escape.

The only thing that Elise could not count on is falling for the doofusy math teacher. Meanwhile, as Elise is pretending to seduce Frank, and accidentally falling for him, the duo is being tailed by Interpol agents lead by Inspector Acheson (Paul Bettany) and by an evil Russian gangster (Steven Berkoff) who believes Elise knows where his stolen money is.

The plot of "The Tourist" is meant to combine a touch of Alfred Hitchcock with a dash of Cary Grant at his most fleet footed and charming and while it conjures some of those memories, "The Tourist" is far more interested in the modern, tabloid-esque notion of Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie making goo goo eyes at each other.

During production of "The Tourist" Johnny Depp insisted on never being alone with Angelina Jolie where paparazzi could get a picture and create a story. In the movie itself, director Von Donnersmarck goes for a similar paparazzi voyeurism in scenes where the camera just observes Depp and Jolie smoldering at one another.

Depp and Jolie's beauty as a couple is the true appeal of "The Tourist," so much so that the plot becomes an impediment as it too our ogling of the stars. Yes, there is plenty of daring do and mixed up identities, even a chase scene that is unlike most other chase scenes (it involves a pair of boats tied together and a slow speed ride through the stunning canals of Venice) but none of it registers beyond the pull of these two stars.

What stands out in "The Tourist" are scenes like those set on the train ride as Depp and Jolie feel each other out with lustful glances and hushed conversation. Later, Depp and Jolie send sparks flying as they gaze at one another over dinner in a gorgeous café with candlelight and the moon glimmering off the canal in the background. Cinematographer John Seale's imagery here will make you want to live in this scene.

The adventure stuff, the spy stuff is treated with a light heart and good humor in "The Tourist" but it's beside the point. "The Tourist" is about two unbelievably attractive people being unbelievably attractive together against Parisian and Venetian backgrounds that can almost compete with the actors in radiance. This may not have been the overall intent of the makers of "The Tourist" but it works and I can recommend "The Tourist" because I can recommend ogling these megastars.