Heroes of the Zeroes: Hot Fuzz

Heroes of the Zeroes is a daily, alphabetical look back at the 365 best films of 2000-2009.

"Hot Fuzz" Rated R 2007

Way more fun than “Shaun of the Dead,” Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s 2007 cop-action parody raised a powder keg full of hell a la early Sam Raimi or Peter Jackson.

But “Hot Fuzz” proved as astute at the dry and droll as the rock ‘n’ roll — less a full-blown spoof than light lampooning mixed with Monty Python’s wicked wit and camera rigging worthy of Michael Bay.

When supercop Nicholas Angel (Pegg) is sent to small-town Sandford because he’s making other cops’ stats look bad, he seems fated to forever pursue small-time criminals. But once Sandford’s citizens start dropping like flies, he leaps to action.

Every winking fist bump works, as Sandford turns into a John Woo ballet of bullets just waiting for the curtain to rise. Not a door opens without a whoosh on the soundtrack and a hand whizzing into the frame. David Arnold’s score even parrots the emotionality of picked acoustic guitar for pensive heroic moments.

Plus, in an amusing turn, Timothy Dalton plays as much of a Bond villain as Sandford could have — an oily supermarket owner who elects himself employee of the month.

Sharp, cheeky, rollicking, riotously funny and righteously explosive on its own terms, “Hot Fuzz” maintained rumbling rhythms of a real-deal action flick, with a shotgunned-beer approach to getting drunk off its own bloat. The hand-cannon finale created sublimely satirical chaos and any movie that so tightly and sincerely endeared itself to a modern machismo classic like “Point Break” couldn’t be all bad.