Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning, Part One (2023)

As I walked out of the theater for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One (a movie title with far too much punctuation), a woman sitting in the hallway asked me, expectantly and warily, “Is it any good?” With a hasty sigh, I assured her, “It’s fantastic,” realizing only then that the movie had taken my breath away. “Lots of action?” she asked, and I promised, “You have no idea.”
 
I hope she enjoyed it – indeed, I almost stuck around to see if she had, because as much as I’ve hemmed and hawed with blockbuster movies lately, as much as I’ve been besieged by fatigue and corporate horse-trading, Dead Reckoning is the first theatrical release in a long time that felt like an absolute blast: ten out of ten, no notes.
 
Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is back, on the trail of two halves of a mysterious key that will unlock one of the world’s deadliest weapons. His newest mission reunites his old friends Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg) with the disavowed MI6 agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) against the shadowy Gabriel (Esai Morales), his assassin Paris (Pom Klementieff), and pickpocket Grace (Hayley Atwell), caught in the middle of a case that goes back to Ethan’s first days with the IMF.
 
Your mileage may vary on the first two Mission: Impossible films, but there’s no question that the series well and truly hit its stride with 2015’s Rogue Nation, the fifth in the franchise and the first pairing Tom Cruise with director Christopher McQuarrie. Dead Reckoning is McQuarrie’s third outing with the IMF, and if there’s a pocket he’s firmly in it. Since McQuarrie’s arrival, Mission: Impossible has been a racecar in the red, constantly accelerating and delivering consistent thrills that somehow, time and again, find a way to make a tense situation even more nail-biting. What’s not to love about an action film so confident that its first trailer consisted merely of a single stunt and the relentless insistence that, yes, Tom Cruise really drove a motorbike off a mountain? 
 
And even while we’ve seen that stunt over and over again, there is nevertheless a charm and an intensity in the film finally reaching that moment – and then overpowering it, again and again, in a climactic sequence that protracts the audience’s anxiety by making a certain situation unfathomably worse and worse. As a third act setpiece, it’s a definitional moment for the film, which packs all its character beats and espionage plots into one orchestral symphony of chaos aboard the Orient Express. Agatha Christie, eat your heart out; Poirot’s mere murder inquiry can’t hold a candle to the finale of Dead Reckoning. 
 
At two hours and forty-three minutes, Dead Reckoning has a runtime that would make any lesser action movie buckle. Even Dial of Destiny, which I more or less loved, felt a little baggy at two-thirty-four, yet Dead Reckoning clips along, even through preposterous scenes of outlandish didactic dialogue. Buoying even clunky exposition like “The only thing that’s real is this conversation,” what sells the film is the earnest investment we feel between these characters, the genuine care they have for each other. I rewatched the films about two years ago, and even so the chemistry between Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg did more heavy lifting for me than my memory of their friendship in the preceding films. If they’re being playful with each other, we know things will be fine, but the script deftly maneuvers into those moments where conversation becomes deadly serious, raising the ante to a painful degree.
 
Even in a franchise where anyone could be wearing a rubber mask, where death is often just a fake-out, the tension in this film is almost unbearable. The audience knows that Ethan Hunt – that Tom Cruise – is bulletproof, and yet I found myself wheezing with fear each time he flirted with sudden death. McQuarrie is a master magician in this sense, fully immersing the audience in the cinematic illusion of danger. In my review of Fallout, I had said that McQuarrie seemed constantly to be asking, “But what if it were on fire?” And that impulse to ratchet up the stakes persists into Dead Reckoning; there’s a car chase, yes, but the car has no doors, and its occupants are handcuffed in a way that makes driving a challenge – and, of course, there’s a baby carriage in their way. My audience was laughing and gasping in equal measure, a rapturous burst of applause just when things cleared up, only to reveal the light at the end of the tunnel to be, quite literally, an oncoming subway train.
 
That pesky Part One in the title gave me some degree of pause. I thought we’d cleared that hurdle back in the days of Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, and yet we have films like Across the Spider-Verse and Dune taking a year’s hiatus without fully concluding their narratives. There’s so much more to come in Dead Reckoning, Part Two, and yet McQuarrie hasn’t given us half of a story. He’s given us a full film (and then some), albeit with a major door left open for the sequel. That’s not to say that I couldn’t have easily gone another three hours – I could have – but at least this time I don’t feel like my attendance at the next film is taken for granted. Rather, Part One more than earns the right to expect me to come back for more. 
 
Back when Fallout debuted, I called Mission: Impossible “the little franchise that could.” But after 27 years and seven outings, I think it’s safe to say that it’s the persistent and consistent franchise that shows everyone else how it’s done.
 

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One is rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of violence and action, some language, and suggestive material.” Directed by Christopher McQuarrie. Written by Christopher McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen. Starring Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff, and Henry Czerny.

Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018)

In a word, wow. I’m a week late to the Mission: Impossible – Fallout party, and while I would have liked to have seen the film in an entirely packed house, the fact is that Fallout is such a punchy film, so aggressively laced with adrenaline and bombast, that I suspect it’d work just as well on an airplane headrest as in a half-packed IMAX auditorium. It’s a film bursting with energy, firing on more cylinders than you knew a film could have, with a clever knack for surprise. The more hyperbolic in the review community are calling it one of the greatest action films of all time, and while that’s a bridge I’m not ready to cross just yet, I’ll say it’s an appropriate accolade because Mission: Impossible – Fallout is one of the finer action films in recent memory.

In the fallout (see what we did there?) of Rogue Nation, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is still working to dismantle the terror network organizing in the wake of Solomon Lane (Sean Harris). After his team (comprised of Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg) loses a cache of plutonium to Lane’s successors, Ethan is assigned a CIA escort (Henry Cavill) to make sure the weapons are recovered. Little does Ethan know that former MI6 agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) is also chasing the plutonium, in a globetrotting chase that will lead Ethan closer to Lane than he imagined.

As someone who still hasn’t seen the first three Mission: Impossible movies (and with no legitimate reason for not having done so), I’m always a little surprised to think that this is a 22-year franchise with six films, a consistent lead, and an ability to persist without getting bogged down in reinventing itself or in lingering slavishly on the past. It is, in a sense, the purest version of a franchise, shaving off what didn’t work in the last installment and inheriting only a bare skeleton on which to hang a powerful action story. With returning director Christopher McQuarrie (the first time the franchise has brought back a previous helmsman), there are nods back to Rogue Nation, but the story is constructed in such a way that Fallout may as well be a standalone.

And boy does it work. The action setpieces are remarkable, literally breathtaking in a way that lets you temporarily forget the indestructibility of Tom Cruise (both on screen and, evidently, in real life, thanks to his much-ballyhooed refusal of a stuntman). These action scenes are refreshing for their clarity, astonishing in their choreography, and addictively compelling for their ability to raise the stakes like a cinematic Shepard tone. There’s a second-act car chase in Paris that feels like The Dark Knight had a baby with The French Connection, which includes also a motorcycle chase, a shootout, and a marine getaway for good measure; just when you think the fever has pitched, McQuarrie finds a way to raise the mercury with another twist. It’s as if McQuarrie, pulling double-duty as screenwriter, looked at each bad-as-it-can-get moment in the film and asked, “But what if it were on fire?”

Fallout is a movie that feels like anything could happen, but all under the umbrella of certainty that the good guys will prevail and, in fact, that they always already have it in the bag. Between the rubber face-changing masks, the continual double-cross reversals, and the sheer unstoppability of Ethan Hunt (who can, if the occasion requires, pilot a helicopter with no training or reorganize a hostage extraction with minimal time to prepare), Fallout is a movie that just feels right, leaving an audience with a big dumb grin. It’s a movie that doesn’t need a lot of frilly analysis because the movie is very no-frills in its approach to earnest straightforward action. There are a lot of moving parts in the film, with action sequences evolving and morphing even as the plot splinters and diverges. At one point, just when things start to go smoothly and umpteen new challenges arise, Cavill bursts out, “Why do you have to make everything so f—ing complicated?!” If Fallout is overly complicated, it’s in service to the immense satisfaction to be gained once Ethan barrels through the problem with a direct and unilateral solution that takes not a single human life. Ethan Hunt is an American James Bond, yes, but he’s also at home in the superhero genre because of his abiding belief that no mission is worth the life of a teammate; his super power is that aforementioned jack-of-all-trades ability to roll with any punch and salvage any mission gone awry.

The real thrill, then, is not in whether Ethan and the IMF will save the day, because of course they will. It’s in how much will be thrown their way, how much they have to overcome, and how creative a solution they’ll devise to get there. It’s in the payoff when you discover all the steps that have led to this moment, all the ways Ethan has prepared to get what he needs and how much he’ll have to improvise along the way. It’s a lot of fun; I can’t overstate how compulsively fun this movie is and how thoroughly it earns all the moments you want to stand up and cheer, little frissons when Chekhov’s gun gets to fire. If Sicario was the unlikely franchise, Mission: Impossible is the little franchise that could, and it’s earned its day on the hill.

Mission: Impossible – Fallout is rated PG-13 for “violence and intense sequences of action, and for brief strong language.” Written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie. Starring Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris, Angela Bassett, Michelle Monaghan, Vanessa Kirby, and Alec Baldwin.

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015)

I think I missed a memo, because in the last few years, Ethan Hunt has managed to become the American James Bond (Jack Ryan might have had that title long ago, but I was one of only a few who liked his most recent appearance). It’s a bit of a surprise that a franchise which began nineteen years ago is having something of a resurgence in the last five years, but if the series continues to be as good as its latest outing, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, Tom Cruise may end up giving 007 a run for his money. (He’s already played the part longer than anyone played Bond, besting Roger Moore’s 12 years.)

After a Senate hearing disbands the IMF, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) finds himself cut off in the middle of a global search for the invisible Syndicate, a network of terrorists whose existence is doubted by nearly everyone. With the scantest of leads, Hunt seeks help from his tech-savvy comrade Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) while continually crossing paths with the mysterious Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), whose true allegiance is perpetually in doubt.

The James Bond comparison is really and truly invited by Rogue Nation (perhaps more than its immediate predecessor, Ghost Protocol), which begins with a Bond-style opening sequence in which Ethan boards a plane mid-flight from the outside. This audacious stunt, which Cruise performed himself, sets a tone for the film that roots Rogue Nation in an era where action films tried to show moviegoers something they hadn’t seen before, rather than aim first to outdo the competition or just outthink the audience.

As I said of Ghost Protocol, the joy of these films is that they don’t focus so much on transcending the genre as they do on playing very well within the established conventions of the espionage narrative. What’s even more refreshing is the way the films recall the early Bond films’ one-and-done format, without baiting the audience back for a sequel or relying on their memory of a small detail from movies past. As someone who hasn’t seen the first three (but who now wants to, desperately), it’s striking how well the film introduces its main characters, some of whom have been around since 1996. I hadn’t met Ving Rhames’s Luther before, but I had a good sense of who he was and how he fit into the story because the film has a very acute sense of narrative integrity, respecting its audience enough to give us a complete experience.

Rogue Nation is spectacle cinema doing what it ought to do with neither pretension nor laziness. With each Mission Impossible film directed by a different person, I think there’s less of a burden to outdo oneself or someone else, and more room to focus on the quality of the experience itself. Director Christopher McQuarrie, reuniting with Cruise after the very compelling Jack Reacher, has a knack for stories told well without compromising clarity, and the surprising sense of humor from Edge of Tomorrow (which he cowrote) is present also in Rogue Nation, punctuating moments of tension with unexpected moments of delight.

I had gone to see Rogue Nation because an action film always looks better on the big screen, and I’d had such a good time with Ghost Protocol that I wanted to give the franchise another look. Now that Mission Impossible is two for two, it’s probably time for me to go to the back catalog, because now I have a brand that I trust. If nothing else, I have something to tide me over until Ethan Hunt’s British counterpart returns to theaters, and something to which I can look forward when the inevitable sixth Mission Impossible film debuts. That’s my mission, and I do choose to accept it.

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation is rated PG-13 for “sequences of action and violence, and brief partial nudity.” There are quite a few action set pieces with chasing and fighting, but it’s mostly bloodless; there’s a somewhat intense scene where a character is deprived of oxygen for minutes at a time. A woman removes her top, but it’s seen from behind with no visible nudity.

The World's End (2013)

With The World’s End, we close the door on Edgar Wright’s “Cornetto Trilogy,” a thematic trio held together by blood and ice cream, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, as well as some fun genre-bending madcap antics.  Surprisingly earnest but never forgetting to have loads of fun with the sci-fi satire, The World’s End is a worthy successor to the inspired Shaun of the Dead and its clever brother Hot Fuzz.

The World’s End finds Gary King (Pegg) “puttin’ the band back together” in an attempt to recreate an abortive pub crawl twenty years earlier, though he encounters resistance from his old mates (Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman, and Eddie Marsan), who have all grown up and left their childish ways behind them.  Gary’s quest is complicated when he discovers that many of his hometown’s residents have been replaced by alien robot doppelgangers.

I’ll admit to a certain degree of apprehension about this movie after Wright’s last directorial outing, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which had the fun quotient I had come to expect but literalized its video-game roots with a distancing lack of irony.  But in Wright’s filmic homecoming (he’s been making movies with Pegg & Frost for almost ten years, and their Spaced collaboration on TV goes back even further), he recovers his unique directorial voice with a project that’s equal parts heartwarming and hilarious.

The key is Wright’s deft ability (with cowriter Pegg) to navigate tonal shifts without compromising his film’s own unique identity.  In a summer blockbuster season that’s seen empty characterization (Pacific Rim) and tonally schizophrenic tilt-a-whirls (Kick-Ass 2), it’s a relief to see a film like The World’s End, which manages to juggle satire, spoof, comedy, nostalgia, genuine science-fiction, and moving character drama all in one bundle.  As scene-stealers go, it’s hard to do better than Eddie Marsan’s turn as Peter Page, who handles his sad sack role with aplomb; in a key bathetic monologue, he reveals his feelings of finitude, but his giddy one-liners fit perfectly within the bounds of his character because the film takes the time to get us to care about him before making him narratively significant.

It’s a weird, almost perfunctory moment when the film switches from beer-guzzling comedy to ooky sci-fi, as though Wright remembered halfway through editing that he needed to satirize a film genre as he had in Shaun and Fuzz.  But it’s not a requirement that impinges on the film; indeed, Wright’s greatest success is convincing us to care about his characters long before asking us to follow them on an insane journey.  He’s given an assist by some really capable performances; Pegg and Frost switch roles for this film, with Pegg as the loser and Frost as the blue-collar worker, and it’s a role reversal that works better than expected, allowing each actor to remain fresh in a new role.

It doesn’t quite pass the Bechdel test, but The World’s End manages to be tons of fun with an equal serving of well-written heart.  There are plenty of winks and nods to devotees of the genre or just to Cornetto Trilogy aficionados (the ice cream appears, as does the fence), but even taken solely on its own The World’s End is really just a solid movie all the way around.  It does everything a movie ought to do – entertain, amuse, move, provoke – and is a much finer cap to the summer movie season than I was expecting.  If this is how the world ends, bring on the afterlife.

The World’s End is rated R for “pervasive language including sexual references.”  You know the drill:  it’s comparable to Shaun and Fuzz in quantity of F- and C-bombs dropped.  The blood in this one is almost entirely blue (literally, the color blue) and played for comic effect.  We see a man’s bare buttocks once, and the men describe offbeat sexual acts in-depth (the “marmalade sandwich” – two blondes and a redhead – being a tame example).

Shaun of the Dead (2004)

This review has probably been a long time coming. Edgar Wright's first filmic collaboration with Simon Pegg, Shaun of the Dead has been referred to more times on this blog, I would estimate, than any other non-reviewed film herein. Well, no more. Here below, for your reading pleasure, is a treatise on why I love Shaun of the Dead.

In a film that calls itself "the first rom-zom-com" (romantic zombie comedy), Pegg stars as the titular Shaun, who's grappling with a lackluster job as an electronics salesman and a precarious relationship with girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield), who wants more out of life than nights out at local pub The Winchester with Shaun's coarse roommate Ed (Nick Frost). Then zombies attack, and Shaun is forced to deal with his possibly-infected stepfather Phil (Bill Nighy) while attempting to win Liz back amid a mob scene of bite-happy undead.

It's no secret to loyal readers of this blog that I'm absolutely mad about Shaun of the Dead - in an all-encompassing delirious love sense of the word (appropriately, the British definition). The film remains Edgar Wright's finest hour (or hour-forty, to be precise), rambunctiously entertaining and unflinchingly satirical without ever becoming distractingly parodical (I'm looking at you, "Reference Movie" crowd). Blame the airtight screenplay by Wright and Pegg, which teases zombie film conventions while foreshadowing its own plot growth. The script's greatest virtue, though, is its repetition of memorable dialogue and eye-popping (sometimes literally) visual gags that get funnier each time they're executed.

The performances are also credible, with the players doing their parts without relying on comedy crutches like mugging or pandering. Because the cast takes itself seriously while simultaneously recognizing the absurdity of their situation (the epitome of this being Shaun's heated exclamation, "Oh, give us a f---ing break!" as a second wave of zombies encroaches on his position), the comedy is played for more than just a knowing chuckle. Instead, we're treated to great rolling-in-the-aisles fits of laughter which comes not in small doses but in almost every scene. Pegg leads the cast, but it's Frost who will elicit the most laughs from filmgoers, with his gruff yet endearing portrayal of the unpolished Ed; if nothing else, his impression of "Clyde" (it'd be spoiling to tell who Clyde is) will get a few giddy giggles. Even Bill Nighy takes his droll self and drags it out into a plausible caricature of the unlikeable survivor with a heart of gold.

Where the film really succeeds, though, is in its childlike enthusiasm for its subject matter and the gleefully chaotic way in which it plays out, non sequitur humor amplifying the already farcically absurd nature of the film. Who else would think that Queen fits perfectly with a zombie invasion? (Spoiler: it does.) Where else would ice cream and smoking be priorities while surviving a zombie attack? (Spoiler: only in Ed's mind.) And where else would you find a zombie invasion film where the invasion itself happens off-screen and is only a MacGuffin around which the characters can chase each other?

I'm inclined to say that Shaun of the Dead is my favorite zombie movie ever (sorry, Zombieland, but it takes more than a Twinkie to win my heart), and I'm even more ready to claim that it's one of the better films overall made in the last ten years. It's certainly one of the most entertaining.
Shaun of the Dead is rated "R for zombie violence/gore and language." The zombies themselves are grotesque enough, but there are bludgeonings and arterial sprays all over the film, prompting the unforgettable one-liner, "You've got red on you." F-bombs and C-words abound, all played for laughs but nonetheless fantastically inappropriate.

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (2008)

I'd hate to think that Simon Pegg is a one-hit (with a few near-hits) wonder, but How to Lose Friends & Alienate People just didn't score a home run for me.

Based on Toby Young's memoir about his time on staff at Vanity Fair, How to Lose Friends & Alienate People is a cynical look at "making it" with Pegg starring as Sidney Young, an up-and-coming journalist climbing the periodical ladder after being hired by top editor Clayton Harding (Jeff Bridges). Coarse and unrefined, Sidney meets the ire of his immediate editors Alison Olsen (Kirsten Dunst) and Lawrence Maddox (Danny Huston) while trying to court the gorgeous but empty-headed starlet Sophie Maes (Megan Fox).

I haven't yet seen a Simon Pegg vehicle as laugh-out-loud funny as Shaun of the Dead (though Hot Fuzz came close), and after this one I'm still looking. How to Lose Friends & Alienate People is funny, but not consistently so and not usually for more than a snicker every five minutes. (Only one scene, in which Sidney's left leg suffers pretty serious injury repeatedly, elicited three consecutive gut-busters.) The script, consequently, is a little weak - especially for a comedy. It's formulaic in its worst places and only mildly charming in its best. Comedic shortcomings aside, the film suffers from what I call "Observe and Report syndrome" - that is, none of its characters are truly compelling, nor do we have good reason to root for any of them. Sidney's lovable, true, but it's a thin sheen covering a crass and predominantly unappealing core. Alison and Clayton are drawn in very broad strokes, with little characterization beyond "girl" and "boss," respectively; only Maddox has any real personality to him, thanks to a solid performance by the always reliable Huston.

Then there's Megan Fox, to whom I devote an entire paragraph because I've seen pretty much every one of her major features. Yet I don't seem to have learned my lesson with it all - Transformers, Jennifer's Body (that's about it, folks) - because she's as talented here as she has been in the other films in her canon. Translation: she looks pretty, but her acting ability is as glassy-eyed as her own striking face. She floats through the movie (well, except for that gratuitous scene where she walks through a swimming pool) without committing to an emotion, an inflection, or a facial expression beyond "vapid." Her delivery is unenthusiastic, her body language is entirely silent, and her emotional range goes from zero to one over the duration of the movie. She's gorgeous, but she's got about as much substance as that transparent dress she wears in her early scenes.

What's disappointing is that all of those involved (Fox excluded) can and have done much better work. Pegg was priceless in his collaborations with Edgar Wright, and I liked Dunst in the Spider-Man franchise. While Huston's good here, he's much better elsewhere (like in 30 Days of Night), and Bridges is criminally underused here; despite numerous allusions to The Big Lebowski (including White Russians, Port Huron, and a reference to Clayton being "the dude"), the film employs none of Bridges's trademark talewnt, though he manages to pull off a good deal of deadpan humor. Even director Robert B. Weide isn't doing his best, having cut his teeth on the uber-funny Curb Your Enthusiasm series.

Despite being mildly fun at moments, How to Lose Friends & Alienate People does not represent the best work of anyone here. Even Megan Fox has looked better.

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People carries an R rating "for language, some graphic nudity and brief drug material." Translation: F-bombs galore, a transsexual fully naked from the front (prosthetics doubtless involved), and cocaine presented twice.

Run Fatboy Run (2008)

As part of Sunday's birthday marathon, I sandwiched David Schwimmer's (yes, Ross from Friends) Run Fatboy Run in between Dirty Harry and Pineapple Express, which was probably the optimal placement for the latest comedy (no, his role as Scotty in the latest Star Trek doesn't count as a comedy) starring Simon Pegg (who I'm still calling "Shaun"). [Yes, I'm aware that How to Lose Friends and Alienate People is chronogically more recent, but I haven't seen it and I haven't been encouraged to do so. On with the show.]

It's no secret on this blog that I'm a Simon Pegg fan and have been ever since Shaun of the Dead. It might be a bigger secret that there's no love lost between Schwimmer and me, but it seems my Peggophilia outweighs whatever grudge I bear against "Ross." Plus, a movie title that includes the word "Fatboy" is just too good to resist.

The plot doesn't break any new grounds, so stop me if you've heard this one before. Five years after leaving his beautiful bride Libby (Thandie Newton) at the altar, Dennis Doyle (Pegg) is out to win back her affections now that she's involved with American toolbag-supreme Whit (Hank Azaria). After learning that Whit runs marathons and hinged upon an offhanded comment by Libby, Dennis decides to sign up for the next marathon - with only three weeks to get his self-described "not fat - just unfit" self into shape.

I think it's safe to say that if it weren't for Pegg, I wouldn't have given this movie a thought. When I said "stop me if you've heard this one before," I wasn't kidding. Other than a few choice moments of savory comedy, Run Fatboy Run hits almost every cliche in the "win-her-back" genre. In the hands of a more skilled director or an edgier screenwriter, some of the groan-worthy moments like Dennis's slo-mo training montage could have been beautifully parodic; Pegg co-writes but doesn't bring enough of the biting satire from Shaun of the Dead or even Hot Fuzz. Instead, Run Fatboy Run darts full steam into the predictable traps of every romantic comedy about regaining lost love.

That isn't to say that it's all bad. Sure, it doesn't have many surprises as far as plot goes, and certainly it errs on the side of being trite, but there are a few lights along the way. As Dennis's best friend, Dylan Moran (top Irish comic, co-star of Shaun, and a doppleganger for a young Alan Rickman) is in top dry form, biting one-liners off in between long drags from a cigarette. And for pure slapstick comedy, Harish Patel's role as landlord and assistant coach Mr. Goshdashtidar is tough to beat; I've never been able to keep a straight face when an overweight Indian man chases a pasty British man down the street with a spatula. Actually, I've never seen that before. Chalk one up on the originality column, I suppose.

Ultimately, Run Fatboy Run is fun but forgettable, a good diversion lacking the longevity to be a favorite like some of Pegg's other works.

The MPAA rated Run Fatboy Run "PG-13 for some rude and sexual humor, nudity, language and smoking." Some of the language and sexual humor pushes the boundaries of PG-13, but it wasn't anything that made me cringe. Nudity consists of three instances of male buttocks, and don't even get me started on "smoking." Guess Bogart movies get to be Rated R!

Hot Fuzz (2007)

I've been an unabashed fan of Edgar Wright since taking the advice of a dear friend and renting - later purchasing- his zombie (the Brits call it "the Zed word") spoof masterpiece Shaun of the Dead. So when Wright decided to go for the cop film's jugular, I was more than willing to go along for the ride.

And the team doesn't disappoint, although it's not as inspired a venture as Shaun was. Hot Fuzz is the story of Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg), a cop who's so good at his job that he's reassigned to a small hamlet for "making us all look bad." There he meets Constable Danny Butterman (Nick Frost, "Ed" from Shaun) and Danny's dad, Chief Frank Butterman (Jim Broadbent, who's as creditable a casting choice as he always is). As a series of grisly murders seize the town, Angel begins to believe that these are not, as the rest of "the fuzz" believes, mere accidents (for instance, the florist may not have actually fallen throat-first on her enormous shears). He finds Simon Skinner (a delightfully suspicious Timothy Dalton), a local supermarket baron, to be Suspect Numero Uno.

Like Next, Hot Fuzz tries to be two things - simultaneously a cop film and a dissection of that genre. Unlike Next, Hot Fuzz succeeds in its endeavor to keep one foot in each sandbox, only it doesn't do it quite so well as its "Zed word" predecessor. Hot Fuzz, you see, certainly leans more heavily toward cop film than satirization. Though that's not to say the film suffers for it - Hot Fuzz is a great cop film; it's just not as funny as Shaun of the Dead. That's my lament. (Look for a parallel observation when I review the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy.)

The cast is superb, from its aforementioned headliners to cinephile's-dream cameos from Bill Nighy, Martin Freeman (Tim from The Office UK), and even Cate Blanchett (apparently a big Shaun fan). As the exasperated Angel, Pegg does a firstrate job of bouncing between understandable frustration and guffaw-inducing cliche-bashing. Frost is more than comfortable in the shoes of dimwitted but lovable Danny; although at times he seems more like an overeager Ed than a totally new character, he's adorable - and funny - enough that it doesn't really matter.

Wright's direction is showy, calling more attention to itself than I remember in Shaun (maybe it's time to re-view and review?), though again - and here I invoke Jerry Seinfeld - not that there's anything wrong with that. Cop films are often showy spectacles, so why should this one be any different? The editing deftly works with Wright here, delivering an adrenaline shot of chuckles from a well-placed cut.

I've pointed out that the movie takes itself seriously - but fortunately not too seriously. That's why Hot Fuzz works at being of two minds and - oh, let's keep kicking Nic Cage - Next didn't.