Movie Review: Hot Fuzz (2007)

Genre: Comedy Action  

Director: Edgar Wright  

Starring: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jim Broadbent, Timothy Dalton  

Running Time: 121 minutes  

Synopsis: Overachieving Constable Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) of London's Metro Police is promoted to sergeant and shuffled off to the sleepy village of Sandford, Gloucestershire. He finds the local police service under Inspector Frank Butterman (Jim Broadbent) happy to generally do nothing as long as Sandford is competing for the Best Village award. Nicholas partners with Constable Danny Butterman (Nick Frost), the Inspector's son, and meets local supermarket owner Simon Skinner (Timothy Dalton) and other influential members of the Neighbourhood Watch Alliance. When a series of grisly "accidents" claim multiple lives, Nicholas is the only officer to believe a murderer is on the loose.

What Works Well: With Bad Boys II and Point Break as two favourite inspiration sources, this send-up of police action movies leverages all the cliches into over-the-top and mostly on-target comedy. Director Edgar Wright and his co-writer and star Simon Pegg deploy exaggerated violence and manic editing to also skewer traditional quaint English countryside attitudes. Pegg keeps a straight face as the way-too-serious cop who can never switch off, but humanity rises out of the carnage through the friendship he forges with Nick Frost's Danny Butterman. The supporting cast animates the pulse of a village with the darkest of underbellies.

What Does Not Work As Well: With focus meandering towards solving a slasher mystery, the running time drags on, and a couple of ultimately pointless chase scenes run out of breath. The all-guns-blazing final act leans more towards excessive action than wit, and is cluttered by a few too many barely defined side-characters.

Conclusion: Forget the gory deaths, find the missing swan.



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Movie Review: Shaun Of The Dead (2004)

A romantic comedy with zombies, Shaun Of The Dead finds plenty of laughs as a loser stumbles upon his purpose in life: fight-off zombie hordes and regain his girlfriend's love.

In London, 29-year-old sales assistant Shaun (Simon Pegg) is stuck in a stalled life. His girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield) is tired of spending every night at the Winchester Pub and threatens a break-up, preferring the company of her roommates David and Dianne (Dylan Moran and Lucy Davis). Shaun has two flatmates: his good friend Ed (Nick Frost) is jovial and jobless, while the more serious Pete (Peter Serafinowicz) is frustrated at both of them for being slobs and not getting on with life.

Meanwhile, a zombie apocalypse is unfolding in London, but Shaun is oblivious to the increasing number of blood-sucking walking corpses. Eventually Shaun and Ed come face to face with two zombies and realize the whole city is over-run by the deadly creatures. Shaun springs to action and devises a plan to rescue Liz and his mother Barbara (Penelope Wilton). But his father-in-law Philip (Bill Nighy) has already been bitten by a zombie, and taking refuge at the Winchester may not be the best of ideas.

A high-energy loony zombie comedy, Shaun Of The Dead thrives on a laid-back attitude, British humour, and lovable protagonists. Star Simon Pegg and director Edgar Wright co-wrote the screenplay and use the zombie apocalypse as a backdrop to several familiar themes, including squabbling roommates, a lovers' tiff and break-up, the flighty mum, tension between son and step-father, and the zombie-like routine of day-to-day life in the doldrums. Battling the undead becomes just another obstacle Shaun needs to overcome to put his life back together, once he decides to do so.

The opening act is patient, Wright taking his time filling in the admittedly limited details of Shaun's life. Try as he might this young man cannot do anything right, neither in his love life nor his career, but he does stand by his buddy Ed, who is even further behind the starting line of adulthood. As Shaun scrambles from his apartment to the local store then to work and the inevitable stop at the Winchester, his lifeless routine means he fails to see the increasing number of lifeless zombies roaming the streets.

Once Shaun and Ed finally come face to face with the apocalypse, Shaun Of The Dead kicks into a madcap gear and does not let up. The battles with the zombies are frequent and hilarious, Shaun finds the hero within, Ed discovers the joys of the outdoors, and together they make a formidable pair on a quest to save friends and family. Wright sometimes allows the tension within the group (Shaun and Liz's roommate David simply don't get along) to get in the way of the fun, but overall maintains durable momentum.

Many good people don't survive and tales of heroism abound; but the legend of Shaun Of The Dead will live forever down at the Winchester, where the namesake rifle over the bar may or may not be in working order.



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Movie Review: Inheritance (2020)

A psychological drama with suspense elements, Inheritance posits a bizarre premise and disappears into yawning logic gaps.

Wealthy businessman Archer Monroe dies and leaves his estate to his wife Catherine (Connie Nielsen), $20 million to his son Congressman William Monroe (Chase Crawford), and only $1 million to his daughter, Manhattan District Attorney Lauren Monroe (Lily Collins). But she also receives a cryptic video message and is shocked to discover Archer kept a prisoner (Simon Pegg) in an underground bunker for 30 years. 

The chained man claims to be Morgan Warner, Archer's friend from their younger days, kept in captivity because he knows a secret that could destroy the Monroes. Now he toys with Lauren to try and gain her sympathy and his freedom. Lauren has to sort out truths from lies and protect her family's legacy.

Written by Matthew Kennedy and directed by Vaughn Stein, Inheritance is an independent production stretching too far to unearth surprises. The story foundation of a business tycoon secretly imprisoning a foe for 30 years in a private bunker is wobbly enough to begin with. The subsequent actions of the supposedly smart and idealistic Lauren are well beyond any logic sphere. Morgan Warner as the antagonist, remarkably sharp and healthy after 30 years underground, also skips past authenticity.

The script is littered with loose ends. Lauren is supposedly lead prosecutor on a massive high-profile financial fraud case. She also has a husband and daughter. All of her career and family obligations are abandoned, as are the halfhearted attempts to link some of Warner's revelations about Archer's secrets to Lauren's present life. Meanwhile, brother William's reelection campaign goes nowhere, while corruption in politics is treated as shock news.

Confronted by the script's internal contradictions, the cast members unsurprisingly flounder, Lily Collins struggling to convince as Lauren frustratingly makes every wrong move just to prolong the mystery. Simon Pegg appears to enjoy a different kind of role as the canny victim hiding secrets, and gradually emerges as the one bright spot.

Inheritance loses more credibility with every new revelation, and as they tumble out of the closets, even the skeletons are rolling their eyes.



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Movie Review: Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018)

A thrill-a-minute action movie, Mission: Impossible - Fallout delivers expertly constructed and exhilitaring set-pieces with astounding stunt work, but tilts towards over-the-top extremes.

Agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) of the Impossible Mission Force (IMF) accepts an assignment to retrieve missing plutonium before it falls into the hands of an anarchist terrorist group led by the mysterious John Lark, who filled the void created when Ethan apprehended mastermind Solomon Lane (Sean Harris).

Working with his support members Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg), Ethan finds but loses the plutonium in a botched transaction in Berlin. This failure prompts the CIA's Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett) to insist her agent Walker (Henry Cavill) accompany Ethan, over the objections of IMF's Secretary Hunley (Alec Baldwin). 

Using information extracted from a rogue Norwegian nuclear scientist, Ethan's team heads to Paris to disrupt a meeting between Lark and black market dealer White Widow (Vanessa Kirby). After reuniting with MI6's agent Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson), Ethan is forced to improvise by adopting a terrorist persona, and learns that Lane's release is part of a maniacal revenge and mass murder plot, with Ethan's ex-wife Julia (Michelle Monaghan) in imminent danger.

The sixth installment in the Mission: Impossible franchise, Fallout is stacked with exactly what the series promises: a succession of hair-raising chases, impossible yet possible stunts, and dazzling oh no! moments. Every plan is well thought-out but nothing ever goes according to plan, on-the-fly innovation is a core ingredient, and every twist is followed by a turn to throw doubt on everything and everyone. And in the hands of star/co-producer Tom Cruise and writer/director Christopher McQuarrie, quality and confidence ooze from every scene.

But yet signs of flab creep in. At 147 minutes this is a really long haul. Many of the chases should have been more sharply edited, and one or two of the pursuits could have been dispensed with altogether. In a subversion of real-time tension, the final 15 minutes (featuring the de rigeur countdown to the small matter of multiple nuclear bomb explosions) seem to take twice as long to tick by. And the humour starts to creep towards Roger Moore-era Bond shenanigans, sharp wit replaced by eye-rolls.

As for the plot, this is classic MacGuffin territory. The plutonium balls are an excuse for agile hops to snazzy locations in Berlin, Paris and London, ending with a trip to a rustic medical camp in Kashmir. The neck-snapping double and triple-crosses between all the assembled agents border on incomprehensible, but McQuarrie takes care to always explain what is going on and why (whether it makes sense or not), and particularly excels in rational, non-nausea-inducing editing of the chase and hand-to-hand combat scenes.

And Cruise continues to astound by performing all his own stunts, and some are truly jaw-dropping. The breathless motorcycle, car, and foot chases are here augmented by extraordinary fun with helicopters (inside and out), and Cruise earns enormous respect by placing his body on the line for some of the most impressive stunts captured on film.

Mission: Impossible - Fallout succumbs to some excess, but still delivers a blast.



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Movie Review: The World's End (2013)

A wayward invaders-amongst-us comedy, The World's End offers some fun but is hampered by a painful lack of ideas and weak execution.

In England, Gary King (Simon Pegg) is solidly in middle age and has wasted his life away. He still reminisces about the college night in Newton Haven when his group of friends attempted an epic pub crawl but only made it through nine of the twelve pubs before quitting. Gary reconnects with Andy (Nick Frost), Steven (Paddy Considine), Oliver (Martin Freeman), and Peter (Eddie Marsan) to convince them to try again and this time make it to all twelve establishments, ending at the appropriately named The World's End.

Other than Gary all the men have settled down into various careers and none are thrilled to see him, especially teetotaller Andy, but they humour their old friend mostly out of pity. They start the crawl again and bump into Oliver's sister Sam (Rosamund Pike), who had a quickie in the bathroom with Gary on that fateful college night. But more worrisome is the gentrified new look of the pubs, and the weird behaviour of the locals, soon exposed as robots with dark blue blood.

Combining routine middle aged male angst and overly-familiar something-strange-is-going-on-around-here into a comedy bowl, director and co-writer (with Pegg) Edgar Wright tries to wring a good time out of a tired premise. The success is patchy at best, as The World's End desperately searches for meaningful content, overreaching wildly in its climax towards explaining the entire human condition through an argument with a set of lights.

Despite plenty of fun to be had in the combat scenes between the easily fragmentable, blue ink spewing robots and the guys, Wright and Pegg falter in building their film on a shallow character base. Gary is a prototypical fast-talking (and mostly lying) drunk loser stuck in the glories of high school, and is not provided with any redeeming character arc. His four friends are generally blank slates, and The World's End trawls within a level of interchangeable disinterest.

Rosamund Pike as Sam suffers most of all, and it's not certain anyone knew why she was in the movie. Pierce Brosnan offers a glorified cameo as the college professor who makes an appearance during the second attempt at pub crawl completionism.

As for themes Wright and Pegg may be loosely aiming for, choose from the bland freedom-is-all-that-matters to friendship-is-forever hokum, with a pit stop at it's-better-to-be-a-down-and-out-bum-than-a-generic-robot revelation. It's all drowned in repetitive drinking and fighting scenes until the utterly unconvincing finale. The guys are trying to make it to the final pub, but neither the journey nor the destination are worthwhile.

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