Hot Fuzz
2007, directed by Edgar Wright, starring Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Timothy Dalton, Bill Nighy, Martin Freeman, Steve Coogan, Jim Broadbent, Edward Woodward...

Going to see Hot Fuzz I had an advantage over many as due to my not being generally into horror movies, I've never seen Shaun of the Dead and therefore had no pre-conceptions of Pegg and Frost's second major big-screen outing having to top the earlier film. And I'll say straight away that Hot Fuzz is very funny, in fact laugh-out-loud funny – but it's also weird in a way I find hard to pin down even a week after seeing it.

Pegg plays Sgt Nicholas Angel, a London copper so successful that he makes the rest of the Met look poor by comparison, so they post him to the West Country village of Sandford, where he's teamed with hapless PC and shoot-em-up movie fan Frost. The village is supposedly the most crime-free place in Britain, but then the grizly deaths start happening...

For half its length the film meanders along rather like an old 'Comic Strip' TV play, but then without warning it turns into a gun-fest with Pegg and Frost expending more bullets than Willis, Schwarzenegger and Stallone combined. This is of course a satire on such films, but i tn my opinion the carnage does go on rather too long, and the film would be better if it was around 20 minutes shorter. That said it's still riotous entertainment – ex-Bond Timothy Dalton makes a very good slimy villain while it is great fun spotting the many stars who snapped up cameo roles. I particularly liked Edward Woodward as a neighbourhood watch person and Peter Jackson as Santa – I kid you not...