Hot Fuzz (Edgar Wright, 2007, UK)

Okay, so Shaun of the Dead is probably the best British romantic zombie comedy ever and therefore a tough act to follow. The team behind that particular triumph has a good go with its latest, a kick-ass action cop buddy flick set in a typically English rural backwater. If it doesn't entirely succeed, it certainly isn't for want of trying.

Simon Pegg (Shaun in SOTD) plays Nick Angel, a tough city supercop reassigned by London's finest to the sleepy village of Sandford (actually the director's hometown of Wells in Somerset) with only his Peace Lily for company. Here, thanks to cooperation between the police and the local neighbourhood watch (the brilliantly monikered NWA) there hasn't been a reported crime for nearly 20 years. Angel finds the pace of life too slow and yearns to return to the city; his yokel colleagues - including two fantastically bone-idle, anti-social CID officers - yearn for the same. All except Danny (played by slob everyman Nick Frost, Pegg's sidekick in SOTD), who befriends Nick, solely on the basis that he has fired his 'lethal weapon' in anger! Then a series of bloody murders start to occur, intially passed off by the locals as 'curious accidents'.

Riffing on the creepiness that can be rustic England, the film veers off from fish out of water cosiness to Straw Dogs type menace, whilst finally alighting on Scream-like dice and slice mayhem. The film is not for the faint-hearted, but if you're not averse to a bit of chop-choppy, you'll love it! Film references come thick and fast, the afore-mentioned Lethal Weapon, Straw Dogs and Scream are added to by in-jokes from amongst others, Point Break, Bad Boys II, The Wicker Man, Shaun of the Dead, and even Cannon and Ball's tosh masterwerk The Boys in Blue. There is also an impressive cast list - a who's who of British comedy including Bill Bailey, Steve Coogan, Jim Broadbent, Bill Nighy, Stephen Merchant, as well as big leaguers like Timothy Dalton, Billie Whitelaw and Paul Freeman and a sinister Edward Woodward.

The film looks brilliant and there is the trademark mad-rush editing of Wright's cult TV show Spaced (also with Pegg and Frost) and Shaun of the Dead. There are some great jokes and thankfully not that many misfires. Hell, there's even a Bullitt like car chase (albeit between a pair of Vauxhall Astras). Great fun and definitely one for the DVD collection when it surfaces later on in the year. It even reclaims Point Break from rubbish cop flick hell - and that's some achievement.

Mr Mudd