Hot Fuzz

The wickedly clever English minds behind "rom-zom-com" Shaun of the Dead are back with another half-spoof, half-homage to a classic Hollywood genre: the high-octane buddy cop flick. In HOT FUZZ, Sergeant Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg), a tightly wound London cop whose arrest record is 400 times higher than anyone else's is showing up his colleagues, so the department rewards him by assigning him to a sleepy country town called Sandford, where there are no recorded murders -- but the accidental deaths are astronomical. Sergeant Angel, who's all business, is annoyed with his new post and his new partner, Danny (Nick Frost). The blubbery, childlike son of the department's inspector (Jim Broadbent), Danny is obsessed with Hollywood action films and impressed with Angel's past as a city cop -- "Have you ever fired two guns whilst jumping through the air?" he demands to know (a hint to the audience of what's to come). Sandford, as it turns out, isn't as idyllic and crime-free as it looks. All those "accidents" are really murder most foul, but only Nick and Danny want to follow the leads to the truth, which culminates in an unrelentingly grisly -- but still funny -- climax that's full of every action cliché in the Hollywood playbook.