Hot Fuzz

Hot Fuzz (from Weird and Wonderful II: Fifty More Cult Films by George Hughes, available from freefall-productions.com on 02/11/20)

2007 / UK / 121 minutes

“Nasty way to go!”

Director: Edgar Wright / Screenplay: Edgar Wright & Simon Pegg / Director of Photography: Jess Hall / Music: David Arnold / Production: Nira Park, Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner for Working Title Films / Cast: Simon Pegg (Sergeant Nicholas Angel), Nick Frost (PC Danny Butterman), Jim Broadbent (Inspector Frank Butterman), Timothy Dalton (Simon Skinner), Bill Bailey (Sergeant Turner), Paul Freeman (Reverend Shooter), Stuart Wilson (Dr. Hatcher), Edward Woodward (Tom Weaver), Kenneth Cranham (James Reaper), Stephen Merchant (P.I. Staker), Rory McCann (Michael Armstrong), Lucy Punch (Eve Draper), David Bradley (Arthur Webley), Olivia Colman (PC Doris Thatcher), Karl Johnson (PC Bob Walker), Kevin Eldon (Sergeant Tony Fisher), Paddy Considine (DS Andy Wainwright), Rafe Spall (DC Andy Cartwright), David Threlfall (Martin Blower), Steve Coogan (The Inspector), Bill Nighy (The Chief Inspector).

Edgar Wright’s outstanding buddy cop comedy Hot Fuzz is first and foremost a celebration of film itself. Three years after delivering the zombie horror satire Shaun of the Dead, Wright and co- writer / star Simon Pegg outdid themselves with this brilliantly funny, extremely clever and perfectly constructed work, a Hollywood- style explosive actioner set almost entirely in a small English town.

   Beginning in London with Pegg’s saintly Met Police Sergeant Nicholas Angel getting an unwanted transfer to the countryside (his superiors want rid of him because his outstanding record is making the rest of the force look bad), Hot Fuzz introduces the first of it’s rapid fire cameos with Steve Coogan and Bill Nighy as Angel’s bosses before moving onto the fictional village of Sandford in Gloucestershire.

   At first just bored by small town life and irritated by his new colleagues’ laziness and lack of professionalism, Angel eventually becomes friends with PC Danny Butterman (Nick Frost), son of his new boss Inspector Frank Butterman (Jim Broadbent). Fascinated by Angel’s experiences policing in a city (“Proper action and shit”), Danny introduces him to American action films and the local pub.

   But when several Sandford residents begin turning up dead in bizarre and increasingly grisly circumstances, Angel begins to suspect that the supposedly isolated “Accidents” are a series of murders related to a recent property deal involving sinister supermarket manager Simon Skinner (Timothy Dalton).

   After uncovering a secret Neighbourhood Watch Alliance (“NWA”) meeting, Angel discovers not just Skinner, but all of the town’s “Community Leaders” are involved, including Frank. The real reasons for the murders also turn out to be incredibly petty, with each victim having been killed for apparently harming Sandford’s chances in the forthcoming “Village of the Year” competition.

   With Danny’s help, Angel escapes the NWA and considers returning to London before remembering the films they watched together and deciding to make a stand against the murderous “Elders”. After liberating a stash of weapons they’d previously confiscated from an eccentric farmer, Angel and Danny convince the rest of the Sandford police officers to join them and take on the NWA in an epic shoot- out…

   Really filmed in Wells in Somerset, Hot Fuzz is a parody that looks up to, rather than sneers at, the genre it’s parodying. The amount of classic movie references rammed into it would be impossible to list here but with a non- existent tradition of buddy cop action films in the UK, it still feels fresh and original on it’s own terms.

   While there are the very British small town clichés and nods to ’60’s and ’70’s UK horror films (in addition to “The Andies”, two chain- smoking and moustached detectives recognisable from every BBC police drama since the dawn of time), the car chases, shoot- outs and explosions are pure ’80’s and ’90’s Hollywood. As intentionally and ridiculously out of place as they are, it’s all excellently staged, and many are in fact better done than similar sequences in most serious actioners.

   While the Pegg and Frost double act carries the majority of the film, Hot Fuzz also features a great supporting cast of both new and established British talent, with Dalton particularly superb as the main villain leading the town’s villainous array of older thespians (although his final fight scene with Pegg heavily references the original Lethal Weapon’s, which is kind of awkward when you consider that Dalton and Mad Mel have an ex- wife in common).

   Watching the brilliantly realised carnage in the final act, it’s impossible not to wonder what Wright could accomplish with a serious film (like Guy Ritchie, he’d probably be incapable of resisting the urge to include more humour even if he set out to play a project straight). He’s continued to make comedies since, with The World’s End (2013) taking Pegg and Frost into Sci- Fi territory for the final part of a loose trilogy that began with Shaun of the Dead. But it’s Hot Fuzz that remains by far the standout.

   The Wright / Pegg / Frost team had first collaborated on a decade’s worth of amateur projects before they came to national attention in 1999 with their Channel 4 flatshare sitcom, Spaced. At the time, although the serious version had been done with This Life (1996 - 1997), as far as comedy went, established (i.e. middle aged) UK television writers were knocking out housemate sitcoms that combined their own out of date house sharing experiences in the ’60’s and ’70’s with American influences like Friends. Needless to say, none of this rang particularly true for Britain’s real renters and Spaced was hugely refreshing for giving it’s target audience something relatable.

   After Shaun and Hot Fuzz, Pegg went on to star in two Paramount franchises with the Mission: Impossible series (starting in the sub par M:I-3 but staying on throughout the more impressive later instalments) and the “Alternate Reality” Star Trek films (ironically making his debut in the overall eleventh Trek film after his Spaced character had famously mentioned the “Odd numbered ones are always shit” rule).

   It could be argued that the village elders predicted the current “Culture Wars” in the UK, with the country’s class system now rearranged largely along generational lines. The “NWA” are certainly the kind of comfortably retired, propertied, brexiteering, Tory boomers now exploiting the young through landlordism and domination of the power structures (at one point Frank Butterman says “Make Sandford great again”).

   But on a more hopeful note, it’s the town’s working age population coming together that defeats them in the end, with the rank and file police officers even enlisting the help of Sandford’s previously universally vilified “Hoodies” to do it.