Continuing the clearly successful trend of transposing action from gritty American streets to quiet British suburbia, audiences join Met super-cop, Nicholas Angel (Pegg) whose arrest record – at 400 percent higher than the rest of the force – is embarrassing his superiors. To take some of the heat off, they transfer him from London to the sleepy village of Sandford, somewhere in the English countryside. There he finds a force of officers taking an inconsistent stance on the letter of the law and assignments that see him policing garden parties and searching for escaped swans.
He soon makes an unlikely friend in fellow police officer Danny Butterman (Frost), whose enthusiasm for the apparently non-existent action side of the job is matched only by his general incompetence for anything resembling actual police work. Angel takes Butterman under his wing, teaching him the skills he needs to be the pride of the service, while Butterman shows his mentor how to fill downtime with something other than paperwork. But when Angel starts to suspect that the mysterious accidents afflicting various village residents aren't so accidental, the realization that there may be a serial killer on the prowl hits. It's just a shame that his superiors aren't quite so easily convinced.
CLICK HERE to read the full Hot Fuzz review by Joe Utichi.
Score: 9 out of 10
Video and Presentation
This film is presented in 2.35:1 widescreen, at 1080p. The multitude of special features on this disc doesn't leave a lot of space for the feature, but the compression doesn't seem to have hurt the presentation all that much. The picture is clear and free of heavy grain and blemishes. The color palette is kept to the gray and blue range, with the occasional use of color – the lively street carnival, a village flower shop, spurts of blood here and there – to occasionally brighten the image. Detail isn't extraordinary, but there is a good sense of depth and texture here. This Blu-ray manages to bring the city of Sandford to life, and surpasses the HD DVD release from 2007.
Score: 8 out of 10
Languages and Audio
Like the cop genre films it parodies, Hot Fuzz relies heavily on well-crafted sound design to amp up the action, and in 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, it does a damn fine job of it (according to the trivia track, 27 different siren noises were used in the opening credits alone). The purposefully brash audio comes through loud and heavy, in full-channel surround. Bass thunders through the subwoofer during the gunfights, while explosions, screeching tires and breaking glass push the high end without any distortion. Voices are delivered crisply and cleanly, while subtle atmospheric details like crowd noise or the sound of footsteps across a floor provide moments of stereoscopic goodness.
Score: 9 out of 10
Extras and Packaging
Thanks to the storage capacity of Blu-ray, all the material from the three-disc special edition DVD is contained here in one single disc. There are loads of special features here (all of them previously released), including five – yes, five – separate audio commentaries, 22 deleted scenes and a multi-part making-of featurette, plus U-Control trivia and storyboard tracks that run parallel to the film.
The extensive list of special features includes:
- Inadmissible: Deleted Scenes
- Outtakes
- The Evidence Room
- Conclusive: We Made Hot Fuzz
- Speculative: Video Blogs
- Forensic: Featurettes
- Photographic: Galleries
- Hearsay: Plot Holes & Comparisons
- Falsified: Dead Right
- Conclusive: We Made Hot Fuzz
- The Fuzzball Rally - Uncut with Commentary by Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost & Joe Cornish
- The Man Who Would be Fuzz
- Hot Funk
- Danny's Notebook: The Other Side
- Additional Video Blogs
- Trailers
- Storyboard Gallery
- Feature Commentary with Simon Pegg & Edgar Wright
- Feature Commentary with the Sandford Police Service: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jim Broadbent, Rafe Spall, Kevin Eldon & Olivia Colman
- Feature Commentary with Edgar Wright & Quentin Tarantino
- Feature Commentary with the Sandford Village People: Kenneth Cranham, Timothy Dalton, Paul Freeman & Edward Woodward
- Feature Commentary with the Real Fuzz: Andy Leafe & Nick Eckland
- D-Box Motion Enabled
- BD-Live Enabled
- U-Control Fuzz-O-Meter
- U-Control Storyboards
Everything here, of course, is hilarious, but several of the extras are little more than quickie in-jokes. Two of these features will be familiar to those who have combed through the extras of the DVD release of Shaun of the Dead. Just like "The Man Who Would Be Shaun," "The Man Who Would be Fuzz" is a brief scene from the film re-enacted in the poorly impersonated voices of Sean Connery and Michael Caine. There's also "Hot Funk," a follow-up to "Funky Pete," that's basically a collection of moments from the film where the curse words have been replaced by hilariously PC substitutes and badly mismatched dialogue.
The 22 deleted scenes are amusing, but obviously cut for a reason and are enriched by Edgar Wright's explanations. The outtakes are simply an extended collection of bloopers and riffs, which are always funny and made funnier here by the talent involved. "Danny's Notebook" takes a look at Nick Frost's notes and reveals an amusing illustration as he flips through the pages.
The mercilessly funny "Fuzzball Rally" follows the trio on their U.S. press tour. Crafted like any personal, in-depth documentary, the footage is all hand-held, very raw and every bit as amusing. The chemistry between the actors and their director is tangible and their love for the audience in every city through which they travel is obvious and endearing.
The "Evidence Room" is a collection of material from the making of Hot Fuzz, carried over from the special edition. On a less entertaining film this would have been little more than a collection boring, studio-produced, EPK material. Thankfully, in the hands of Pegg, Wright and Frost, the blogs and behind-the-scenes featurettes are brought to life in a way rarely seen. There's real substance here; material worthy of your time and interest, presented with a humor deserving of the film itself. Not to be missed, however, are "Plot Holes & Comparisons," a selection of storyboard-style illustrations, narrated by their in-character subjects, filling in some of the plot holes which may have left the more attentive viewers scratching their heads (also in keeping with a similar feature on the Shaun DVD).
As for the commentaries, Tarantino quickly kicks off his segment with an applicable quote: "Edgar called me and said that since they were double-dipping with this DVD – creating an Ultra Edition on top of their Super Edition – they wanted some sleazy celebrity participation. Which I happily provided." That little moment of truth plays perfectly into these additional commentaries, celebrating comedy, honesty and tangible camaraderie each in equal measure. The commentary by Wright and Tarantino tends to be a bit more referential and filmic; whereas the Police and Village People tracks are really a more nostalgic, communal experience among friends (or "mates"). Either way, for film fans and lovers of the movie, there's a ton here to listen through, the Taratino and Police tracks are recommended.
The U-Control features allow you to access the "Fuzz-O-Meter" trivia track and storyboards throughout the film. The trivia is full of action-movie anecdotes and underline some of the movie's subtler references, bringing out an additional laugh from the onscreen madness, while the storyboards show how each scene was originally conceived.
As if that weren't enough, the D-Box functionality will give you a few rumbles during the action scenes when connected with the properly enabled equipment, and the BD-Live portal will take you to Universal's hub where you can watch previews and trailers for new and recent releases.
There's nothing here that will be new to fans, but it's hard to imagine what else they could have put on this disc.
Score: 9 out of 10
The Bottom Line
While not quite as tightly written as its predecessor, Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz is newer and far more slickly produced. It holds up well in Blu-ray, so even if you have it already, you may want to spring for the upgrade.
