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DVDfever.co.uk – Hot Fuzz Blu-ray review Dom Robinson reviews
Universal Pictures UK Blu-ray: 
HD-DVD:
DVD:
- Cert:
- Running time: 121 minutes
- Year: 2007
- Cat no: G51-46103R0
- Released: October 2009
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 28 plus extras
- Picture: 1080p High Definition
- Sound: DTS 5.1
- Languages: English, French, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Japanese
- Subtitles: English plus 14 other languages
- Widescreen: 2.35:1 (Panavision)
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: BD50
- Price: £19.99 (Blu-ray); £24.99 (DVD); £24.99 (HD-DVD)
- Extras: Inadmissible: Deleted Scenes, Outtakes, The Fuzzball Rally: Uncut, The Man Who Would Be Fuzz, Hot Funk, Danny’s Notebook: The Other Side, Additional Video Blogs: VW Blogs, Trailers, Storyboard Gallery, Five Audio Commentaries, U-Control: Storyboards and Fuzz-o-meter
- Vote and comment on this film: View Comments
Director:
- Edgar Wright
((Ant-Man, Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim vs The World, Shaun of the Dead, Them, The World’s End, TV: Alexei Sayle’s Merry-Go-Round, Asylum, French and Saunders, Is It Bill Bailey?, Mash and Peas, Murder Most Horrid, Sir Bernard’s Stately Homes, Spaced, Straight 8)
Producers:
- Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner and Nira Park
Screenplay:
- Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg
Music:
- David Arnold
Cast :
- Sgt. Nicholas Angel: Simon Pegg
PC Danny Butterman: Nick Frost
Inspector Frank Butterman: Jim Broadbent
Simon Skinner: Timothy Dalton
DS Andy Wainwright: Paddy Considine
DC Andy Cartwright: Rafe Spall
Sgt Tony Fisher: Kevin Eldon
PC Bob Walker: Karl Johnson
PC Doris Thatcher: Olivia Colman
Tom Weaver: Edward Woodward
Leslie Tiller: Anne Reid
James Reaper: Kenneth Cranham
Tim Messenger: Adam Buxton
Peter Ian Straker: Stephen Merchant
Michael Armstrong: Rory McCann
Martin Blower: David Threlfall
Eve Draper: Lucy Punch
Sgt Turner: Bill Bailey
Rev Shooter: Paul Freeman
Dr Robin Hatcher: Stuart Wilson
Janine: Cate Blanchett
‘Not’ Janine: Robert Popper
Met Sergeant: Martin Freeman
Met Police Inspector: Steve Coogan
Met Chief Inspector: Bill Nighy
Thief dressed as Santa: Peter Jackson
Shelf Stacker/Voice of Dave: Edgar Wright
In the ‘fnar-‘fnar-titled Hot Fuzz, Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) is a workaholic policeman at the top of his game. He’s great at stopping crime, riot control, advanced driving (and advanced cycling!) and popular with the community, but… he’s making everyone else at the Met look bad, so he’s been promoted to Sergeant… in Sanford, Gloucestershire.
Thus, within a short time of arrival, he’s already chucked out all the kids out of the pub and locked up the Danny (Nick Frost), the policeman who’s about to become his partner. And that’s just the night before he actually gets started. But once he is on the beat for real, he’s assigned mundane jobs like chasing a swan and stopping a man from cutting hedges that don’t belong to him.
Before too long, though, there are strange and suspicious murders going on, starting with the gruesome decapitation for thespians Martin Blower (David Threlfall) and Eve Draper (Lucy Punch), and why are the deaths followed by a strange look from Somerfield boss Simon Skinner (Timothy Dalton) while playing a related tune in his car? Is he just winding them up? Is it a coincidence? Or does he have something to hide?
Hot Fuzz features an incredible cast with so many well-known faces and names, including Jim Broadbent as Danny’s father, also a policeman and who gave him the idea of being in the force, there’s some fantastic shootouts in a country area in homages to Bad Boys II and countless Hong Kong action flicks and it’s further proof that the perfect and most reliable film-making trio are Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. I’m really looking forward to the next collaboration. And there’s also the word “Skellingtons” which, if you know the reference, will make you laugh a lot.
If I had any complaints it would be that, being a fan of any programme or film always being shown in its correct widescreen ratio, while this film is, the clips of Point Break and Bad Boys II are shown in letterboxed stretched across a widescreen TV so everyone looks fat…
And look out for moment when Nick Frost throws the Supercop DVD back into the bargain bin section in Somerfield and there’s a DVD with the artwork of Shaun of the Dead but the title “Zombies Party”.
Director Edgar Wright, who I had the chance to interview following the DVD release of Spaced – which can be read from the link below, makes excellent use of the full 2.35:1 anamorphic frame and the picture is crisp and clear throughout with no problems whatsoever for both indoor and outdoor scenes. Everything is nicely detailed and I also love the whizz-pan shots which are frequently used, even in the most basic of moments of Angel’s day as they make a fantastic impact. For the record, I’m watching on a Panasonic 37″ Plasma screen via a Samsung BD-P1500 Blu-ray player.
The sound is in DTS 5.1 and is well-used not only during shootouts but for the aforementioned whizz-pan shots, various other split-surround effects and dialogue is clear throughout.
The extras are as follows:
- Inadmissible: Deleted Scenes (20:37): A massive 22 here, although over a relatively short time frame. All contain optional director’s commentary. I would definitely have kept the one between Simon Pegg and Jim Broadbent where the word ‘exacerbate’ is used, as fans of Shaun of the Dead will remember its use in that. Also, oddly, in another scene where Nick Frost is handling a DVD box of Point Break, the cover is pixellated out during its blink-and-you-won’t-have-seen-it-even-if-you-didn’t appearance.
All clips are in letterboxed 2.35:1, as is the same with the other extras on this disc.
- Outtakes (10:22): A worthy selection. Every one a winner!
- The Fuzzball Rally: Uncut (1:11:09): A documentary on the press tour for the film in America, with optional commentary by Pegg, Frost, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish, split up with 14 chapters.
- The Man Who Would Be Fuzz (0:34): A brief scene with Pegg and Frost doing it in the voices of Michael Caine and Sean Connery, respectively.
- Hot Funk (3:43): The cast re-recording their lines with TV broadcasts in mind, doing it in the style of Repo Man with deliberately silly words in place of swears.
- Danny’s Notebook: The Other Side (0:21): A different notebook animation to the one in the film.
- Additional Video Blogs: VW Blogs (21:29) includes test-driving Volkswagen cars for the film, a press piece in Dublin, a piece with various elements such as a DVD signing in HMV in Glasgow, a Q&A Session in Birmingham and the Premiere, while Itunes’ Blogs (16:30) are four podcasts with Pegg, Frost and Edgar Wright.
- Trailers: Theatrical trailer (2:27), two UK TV spots (0:30 each) and a Director’s Cut trailer (1:00). The ratios vary between trailers.
- Storyboard Gallery (20:37): The film in storyboard format.
- Audio Commentaries: Five of them here:
- Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright
- Sandford Police Force: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jim Broadbent, Rafe Spall, Kevin Eldon and Olivia Colman
- Edgar Wright and Quentin Tarantino
- Sandford Village People: Kenneth Cranham, Timothy Dalton, Paul Freeman and Edward Woodward
- The Real Fuzz: Andy Leafe and Nick Eckland
Also on this disc is a “U-Control” feature, which on this disc gives you, throughout the film, storyboards and extra info, the latter in the form of the ‘fuzz-o-meter’. That rounds off the massive amount of extras on this disc.
The menu mixes images from the film with a short piece of incidental music playing over and over. There are subtitles in more languages than I can count, while the 28 chapters is perfectly fine for this movie. However, the menu is incredibly slow to access. Scroll down a list of the 22 deleted scenes for example, and it takes almost a second for each one to pass by, and pressing ‘down’ quickly doesn’t make any difference.
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALL 
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.