Director Deep Dive with Edgar Wright: Hot Fuzz (2007)
"The good humor bubbles up from a deep reservoir of affection for Hollywood schlock." --J.R. Jones, Яeader
Having watched Spaced and Shaun of the Dead, you would be forgiven walking into Hot Fuzz expecting more of the same from Simon Pegg—a hapless slacker who gets his shit together and saves the world. Well, you’d be half right. Pegg plays anything but a slacker in Hot Fuzz—on the contrary he is an overachieving Super Cop, who is SO good that he’s “reassigned” out of the city police corp because he’s making the rest of the force look bad. The part you’d be right about is that he does get his shit together and saves the world, or at least his new home of Sanford, Gloucestershire, which is the setting for some very mysterious gruesome accidents. Or are they…murders?
Yes! Yes they are murders. And here is the fun of Hot Fuzz, watching Pegg’s Nicholas Angel run down suspicious leads and piece together the clues of what has to be the most outlandish conspiracy ever written into a murder mystery. Along the way we get a Buddy Plot (again with the endearing Nick Frost, real life Buddy of Pegg and Wright) who loves cop action movies such as Point Break and idolizes his reluctant new partner Angel. And we get to enjoy watching our Super Cop get gaslighted by…almost everyone in his new home village, it seems. The townsfolk do all they can to lead Angel astray and take him down a peg or two, such as accidentally-on-purpose misprinting his name in the local rag as “Angle”. Sick burn!
Angel of course finally figures it out, and here comes Act III, the big shoot-em-up showdown with the villains. To give you an idea of how bananas-over-the-top this section is, just know that Wright and Pegg watched 138 cop movies in preparation. Every cop action movie cliché you can possibly think of is packed into the finale. Firing two guns while leaping through the air! Monologuing bad guys! Hailstorm of bullets with little to no damage! Witty banter!
It’s easy to get caught up in the fun plot and lose sight of what we’re trying to do here, which is study Wright as a director. How has he evolved, from the last movie to this one? Are we seeing themes in subject matter, iconography and style, carried over from one film to the next? Wright is still pretty much at the beginning of his film career so let’s review.
Dead Right (1993): student homage to Dirty Harry cop films
Fistful of Fingers (1995) student homage to spaghetti westerns
Shaun of the Dead (2004) homage to zombie movies a la George Romero
Hot Fuzz (2007) homage to every cop movie ever made but especially Point Break and Lethal Weapon
All four of these films delight in packing in as many genre clichés and tropes as possible, and three of them gently make fun of sleepy English backwater burghs and proper British mores. What would happen if a serial killer terrorized a small town? How about zombies? All right then, what about a Neighborhood Watch Alliance with questionable priorities? Fun fact: Hot Fuzz was shot in Wright’s actual sleepy hometown of Well, Somerset, and the plot includes the Somerfield supermarket where Wright worked as a shelf stocker as a teen.
In terms of artistic progression, I would say Wright’s movies are getting more technically sophisticated, and less “Mel Brooks/Monty Python”. Hot Fuzz is still funny as hell, but the humor is situational, part of the story. And each of these movies has a buddy plot (also a big theme in Spaced)—I’ll be interested to see if this continues further into his filmography.
Actor watch: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and about 3/4 of the cast of Shaun of the Dead reappear in Hot Fuzz.
Will you like this movie? I have heard many people say this movie is one of their top five favorite comedies, so the odds are good that unless you are a completely humorless turnip, you will like this movie. That said, if you just simply hate cop films and British humor is not your cup of tea then you should pick another movie.
At bat: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)
On deck: The World’s End (2013)
P.S. Check this out—Wright’s Frequent Actors.
