One of the funniest jokes in Shaun of the Dead is just how long it takes Pegg's character to realize he's in a zombie movie. In Hot Fuzz, he has no such problem, behaving from the get-go like someone Michael Bay would be proud to cast in his next supercop extravaganza. Too scrawny to be mistaken for the next Vin Diesel, Pegg compensates through sheer intensity as Nicholas Angel, a London officer who takes his job very, very seriously. Every door he opens or locker he slams echoes with the brute smash-cut of a Rambo movie, creating the semblance of action even when there is none.

But the promise of Lethal Weapon-worthy mayhem looms heavy over everything as Angel is promoted to sergeant of Sandford, a criminally dull country village well removed from London's dangerous streets. It's a peculiar assignment, since Sandford already employs at least half a dozen more cops than it could possibly need and, as genial chief Butterman proudly boasts, "There hasn't been a murder in 20 years."

Angel is a tad too efficient for the town, collaring four delinquents before clocking in for his first day. First among troublemakers is the chief's son, Danny (Nick Frost), who craves action of the sort advertised in American movies. Impressed by Angel's experience, he plies him with questions like, "Have you ever fired two guns whilst jumping through the air?" which the top cop answers as only a true police officer would: "There's no way you could perpetrate that amount of carnage and mayhem and not incur a considerable amount of paperwork."

For roughly the first 90 minutes, the running joke is that Wright has managed to execute an inaction movie in which nothing much happens. Sure, there are a few shocking murders unfolding in the background (shocking in the sense that the effects crew has taken great care to make them look as gory as possible), but it's nothing Miss Marple or one of her tea-sipping equivalents couldn't piece together.

Though Hot Fuzz plays more like a whodunit (with a full lineup of sinister-looking Brits, including ex-Bond Timothy Dalton, as possible suspects), Wright and Pegg want to upend both the hyperbole of Hollywood movies and the perception of bobbies as baton-wielding sissies. True to action-movie convention, they include everything from the old saved-by-a-book-in-the-breast-pocket gag to an ambiguously homoerotic subplot between partners. It's all garnished with the folksy British humor of a Wallace & Gromit movie, right down to the police station "swear box," where the tough-as-nails officers donate to the church roof fund every time they let a profanity slip.

[as featured in The Fort Worth Star-Telegram]