Viking Night: Hot Fuzz
By Bruce Hall
August 11, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Pegg and frequent collaborators Nick Frost and Edgar Wright would go on to recreate their homage-laden approach - British people behaving like Americans, but in very British ways - with Shaun of the Dead and its Cornetto Trilogy follow ups, Hot Fuzz and The World’s End.
I’m pretty sure I’ve covered Shaun of the Dead in this column. It’s one of my favorite films ever made, and to describe myself as “delighted” when I first heard about Hot Fuzz would be an understatement on the order of calling Michael Bay’s directing style “ball-swingingly excessive.”
Speaking of Michael Bay’s excessiveness, that’s kind of the deal with Hot Fuzz. Or rather, the deal is with the “buddy cop” film category, particularly the American Flavour Cornetto. Hot Fuzz is a passionate, lingering, tongue filled kiss for the whole genre, with a generous helping of British murder mystery/procedural tossed in. Just like Shaun of the Dead, this is a brilliantly imaginative, painstakingly crafted pastiche of self-reference, homage and smirking self-satisfaction. And it’s the kind of satisfaction you can only get when you’re finally getting to make the buddy cop movie you've wanted to make since you were 13.
And just like you remember, it hits the ground running. Nicholas Angel (Pegg) himself narrates, giving us all the backstory we need on London’s toughest cop. Angel is the best at everything. He’s got the top arrest record, he’s the top shot, the top strategist - he can even run faster than everyone else. Basically, this is the perennial winner of the Jolly Good Bloody Well Best Damn Cop Ever award, hands down. The only thing Angel can’t do well is form meaningful relationships with other people. As his most recent ex-girlfriend will tell you, Nicholas Angel has everything going for him but a heart.
Oh, and also his job. It turns out that London’s Supercop is a little too Lethal Weapon for his own good. The rest of the department is jealous of his achievement, so he's shipped out to the sleepy village of Sandford, run by kindly police chief Frank Butterman (Jim Broadbent). It’s the kind of town where everyone knows everyone else, so the people observe certain boundaries, and police apply the law very loosely. Basically it’s the Mayberry of Merry Olde England. The citizens of the village watch each other’s backs through something called the Neighborhood Watch Alliance (or “NWA”, har har), which is sort of like a Neighborhood Watch, if it was staffed entirely by characters from a 1980s board game.
The citizens of Sanford are led by a hodgepodge of eccentrics, starting with Chief Butterman and ending with oddball local entrepreneur Simon Skinner (Timothy Dalton, who absolutely owns this role), who has a habit of blurting out homicidal double entendres at peculiar times. Angel does his best to fit in with his new assignment, but discovers that his Big City Police Ways are not well appreciated by the town folk. When a suspicious combination of citizens starts to turn up missing and/or brutally murdered, Angel finds himself an outsider looking in. He finds an unlikely ally in Butterman’s oafish-but-endearing son Danny (Nick Frost), who is obsessed with 1980s action films and thinks of Angel as a role model.
Angel’s role as a sanctimonious fish out of water trying to do his job in a secretive environment is intentionally reminiscent of The Wicker Man, and it’s one of probably hundreds of such parallels gleefully sprinkled throughout the film. Action movie tropes are not skewered here so much as they’re re-enacted with panache and a knowing wink. They’re all here - the shooting into the sky scene at the end of Point Break, the John Wu double-bang-bang jumping through the air thing, and even the famous, Michael Bay’s “Three Times Around the World” money shot. Edgar Wright’s active camera work is almost a character unto itself, reminiscent of the way Sam Raimi involves the audience in the action through movement.
And speaking of characters, Pegg and Frost nail their respective roles as the badass veteran with the fresh faced rookie in tow. But the best part about it is that this isn’t an empty parody - it’s a real story, and the relationship between the characters isn’t just lip service, it’s the heart of the film. This gives me hope for Pegg’s efforts on the third Star Trek movie; he’s got a great eye for relationships, and understands that the best parodies are made with love, not cynicism. And by the way, did I mention that Timothy Dalton is the freaking best? I don’t say this often, but I’d watch a movie spinoff just on Simon Skinner, the oily, mustachioed game show host-like grocery mogul who clearly has mental health issues and may - or may not - be a closet psycho.
If there’s any criticism I can level against Hot Fuzz it’s that it has two endings. Right when you think it’s over, some completely unnecessary things happen, making the story about 20 minutes too long. It doesn’t kill the film - it pretty much ends the way you think it will anyway - it just feels like someone realized there was one extraneous plot thread left unaddressed, so why not add another couple of scenes? It’s annoying but not fatal. So if you have any love in your heart at all for the cheesy goodness of Lethal Weapon, Bad Boys, Point Break, or Chow Yun Fat shooting two guns at once - Hot Fuzz is just for you. Maybe...just stop after Ending #1.