via Universal

It’s entirely fitting that a loving homage to the greatest action movies ever made would end up carving out the exact same reputation for itself, and it’s one that Hot Fuzz entirely deserves.

The middle chapter in Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost’s Three Flavors Cornetto trilogy is ingenious in its conception and execution; it’s played entirely as a blockbuster Hollywood buddy caper, with the obvious caveat that it was made on a fraction of the budget and set almost entirely in a sleepy countryside town in the United Kingdom.

From there, though, Wright’s masterful visual compositions perfectly complement a whip-smart and hilarious script to deliver an all guns blazing exercise in very British excess, replete with explosions, gunfire, and jumping through the air in slow motion while dual-wielding firearms.

There’s a reason why Hot Fuzz was swamped in critical acclaim and box office glory when it first landed, and it’s a good thing that the core creative team resisted the temptations to make a sequel, because there’s very little chance it would hold a candle to one of the most deliriously entertaining cinematic shoot em’ ups of the 21st Century.

Even now, more than a decade and a half after its release, Hot Fuzz continues to draw in a crowd on streaming, with FlixPatrol outing it as one of the most-watched movies on Prime Video’s global charts, complete with a Top 10 spot in its native country. We might not be getting a follow-up, but another Wright/Pegg/Frost collaboration would be a perfect substitute regardless of genre.