Hot Fuzz HD-DVD & DVD
A wild variation on the “good cop/bad cop” routine
Tags: Hot Fuzz Categories: DVD/TV Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Daniel "monk" Pelfrey on Oct 12th, 2007
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I wanted Hut Fuzz to be funnier and have less gore. There are elements of the “buddy cop” action genre, the “buddy comedy” and a little bit of mystery. There’s even a bit of horror thrown in, and sadly the balance is just mixed wrong for anything to be effective. Mostly, Hot Fuzz is an action comedy, but it’s too gore-ridden for it to succeed as a comedy. There’s too much drama for it to succeed as simply an action/mystery. Hot Fuzz would work with a bit more focus. Either way, action, horror mystery, drama, or comedy, the film tries too hard to be all things to all audiences and fails.
That’s not to say that Hot Fuzz is a bad film. It is enjoyable enough, when it’s funny, it’s really funny. There are some really god action sequences as well. The story is set up nicely for a really good drama as well. Simon Pegg plays Nocholas Angel, London’s top cop who is so good, he makes the rest of the officers jealous to the point where he gets shoved to a small village. There he meets the usual cast of characters that populate a small town, including those of the local law enforcement.
There are the usual conflicts between big city police procedures and small town intimacy, but they never quite firmly get planted in one genre or another. Some of it is funny, some dramatic, but it is the conflict when a string of grisly murders start occurring that the conflict between officer Angel and the local constabulary, and even the town itself, occurs.
While Hot Fuzz tries and fails to be all things to all audiences, it is still a funny movie if you can get past the gratuitous gore. Part parody, part homage, Hot Fuzzis filled with moments, especially towards the end, that anybody familiar with the action genre will recognize.
Included is the requisite audio commentary by director Edgar Wright and star Simon Pegg, both of whom wrote the script. It’s an amusing and informative track for fans of the film. There’s a whole mess of deleted scenes, which mostly amounts to snipped bits of dialogue, and again there’s commentary here as well. Storyboards, outtakes, pop-up trivia, a piece on the U.S. promotional tour and more help round out the offerings on the DVD. There’s quite a lot so it’s a good package.
HD-DVD owners, however, get more.
First up are three additional commentary tracks. I didn’t listen to each of them all the way through, but the two with the cast and crew from what I sampled are certainly worth checking out. There’s one with two real police officers, and it seems more like a bit of “stunt” casting rather than a real audio commentary.
Then there’s the short film by director Edgar Wright that was made as a teenager. It comes with its own making of featurette and 2 audio commentaries.
A “making of”featurette focuses on the pre-production of Hot Fuzz and is worth checking out because it is so different from the usual fluff these films tend to have. For the more traditional “making of” check out the video blogs that were posted online exploring different aspects of the … well, making of the film. They are collected together and included here. Extending the “making of” aspect are some new featurettes that help to fill in some of the blanks. Altogether there’s over an hour and a half simply on the making of the film here.
A few other featurettes show the special effects process for a couple of shots from their original to finished form, a bit on the plot holes of the film and the requisite still gallery. All in all, the HD-DVD side of things is quite the package.
The DVD is good, but the HD-DVD actually justifies the increase in price in a way that most films on the format have yet to do. There is a noticeable visual quality increase when playing the HD-DVD over the DVD, and the sheer volume of extras makes it a no-brainer. I actually don’t understand why Universal put out Hot Fuzz on standard DVD at all. The DVD/HD-DVD combo has it all.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
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+ When the film tries, it's funny + Good special features + Even more special features for the HD-DVD |
8.0 |
| What Doesn't | |
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- Tries to be too many different types of films - The HD-DVD doesn't make mention on the case of any of the exclusive bonus features |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| A good, if flawed, film in a really good home video package. Spring for the HD-DVD, because the extra stuff is worth it. This is the kind of ammunition the format war needs. | |
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Tags: Hot Fuzz
Posted by Daniel "monk" Pelfrey on Oct 12th, 2007 and is filed under DVD/TV Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
