Hot Fuzz (2007)

Man, these guys are good.

After making the best horror movie AND the best comedy in some time with Shaun of the Dead, and one of the best parts of Grindhouse (the hilarious Don't trailer), the brilliant team of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg comes together to bring us a film that was BETTER than Grindhouse: Hot Fuzz.

Pegg plays Nicholas Angel, a veritable London supercop (his arrest record is noted as being 400% higher than any other officer), and he's making his colleagues look bad, so they send him to the sleepy, crime-free country village of Sandford. Angel arrives and immediately arrests half the town, including what he finds out is his new partner, Danny Butterman (the always-fun Nick Frost), and his general annoyance with the situation takes on a new turn when a series of grisly murders occur, which everyone in town seems to pass off as accidents.

Many films that attempt to mix action and comedy wind up being lame in one or the other; they either are keyed in on comedy and give short shrift to the action, or they focus on the action, and the comedy seems forced and lame. It's rare these days to find a satisfying action movie or a highly amusing comedy standalone, much less to find one that is staggeringly fabulous at both, such as this.
There are definitely constant, laugh-out-loud moments and yet, when the action ramps up, it's more thrilling than any number of generic, faceless battle scenes that we have been inundated with recently.

Pegg and Frost are awesome, as expected, and a parade of awesome characer actors do wonderful work (Jim Broadbest is sweet-natured and simple. Paddy Considine is...a douchebag, and Timothy Dalton gives off a mustache-twirling air of menace)

All in all, a preposterously entertaining action-comedy. 8.5/10 (#2 of 2007 so far)