Hot Fuzz takes its cues from the high-octane action film genre, cluttered with MTV-esque montages, but with blood. The uproarious widescreen hemorrhaging is welcome, though, because Wright finds fresh ways to kill off his characters.

The film explodes in the final 30 minutes, playing with all the action craziness, but it slowly morphs into a buddy picture, in the vein of the loud, pulsating, all-action American cop buddy movie - from Beverly Hills Cop to Lethal Weapon - as Angel and his bumbling beer-swilling partner, Danny Butterman, (Nick Frost, also of Shaun of the Dead), feel the need, in true "Lethal Weapon" fashion, to employ some real police force.

A crop of veteran Brit actors play the village elders: Billie Whitelaw, Paul Freeman, Edward Woodward, Anne Reid, and most notably Jim Broadbent as the amiable Police Chief Frank Butterman and Timothy Dalton, splendid as the supermarket manager with a wicked smirk and untrustworthy moustache. Did you identify Cate Blanchett's voice as the woman who dumps Pegg? And did you recognize who that was masquerading as Santa Claus?