"You're Off the Fuckin' Chain!": Hot Fuzz at 10
"Is it true that there's a point on a man's head where if you shoot it, it will blow up?"
Edgar Wright's Hot Fuzz is perhaps his most genius film from a visual standpoint, injecting so much comedy in every frame that I've discovered at least one new joke with every rewatch. In the last ten years its something I try and revisit with every opportunity that comes by, so there was no way I was going to miss celebrating the film on the day of it's 10th anniversary, as it opened in the U.K. on February 14th, 2007 (the North American release happened in April 20th, 2007, which is when I and many others in the United States and Canada got to experience this cinematic equivalent of a slice of fried gold).
Unstoppable cop Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg), top of his class in the London Police Academy, gets reassigned to the quaint, picturesque countryside town of Sandford by his superiors who are tired of him making them look bad. Angel's arrival into town brings with it a host of weird and varied characters, most notably Angel's new partner Danny Butterman (Nick Frost), the lazy, incompetent, American police film loving son of the police commissioner. While at first there's no serious crime to be found in this new locale, suddenly a murder occurs and the body count starts to rise from that point on. Only Angel and Danny are the ones who can see through the artifice of Sandford and its townspeople, and enact justice.
Hot Fuzz straddles the line between parody and pastiche for a good amount of its 121 minute runtime, but its a loving tribute to the genre of American cop films which Danny adores (most evidently Bad Boys II and Point Break), as well as weird British mystery horror films like The Wicker Man and Don't Look Now. It's a strange blending of genre from that perspective, and a great deal of the film's jokes come from that referential parentage, but Wright's love for cinema and the material elevates the film through that context, and enough attention is given to each of those strands to make it a thoroughly dazzling affair.
At this point in his career, Wright has quite a range of films under his proverbial directors belt, and it's always interesting for me to talk with other film fans and find out where each of them rank from a personal perspective. I'm always surprised when Hot Fuzz shows up on the bottom, and even more surprised when they say because they didn't find it funny. The film can be too clever for its own good at times, but even from a non-cinephilic perspective, the film is ripe with comic material, whether its defusing a sea mine belonging to a mumbling farmer (David Bradley) or the colorful cast of supporting actors who adorn the Sanford police station (most notably Olivia Colman, Paddy Considine, and Rafe Spall), or the fence jumping bit which I've loved since seeing it in the first brief teaser trailer for the film, that acts as a callback to Shaun of the Dead and was even spoofed again in Wright's 2013 film The World's End.
Why I like Hot Fuzz so much is because when I think 'contemporary comedy' usually springs to mind is the deluge of lazily slapped together studio fare - which this film is anything but. Wright displays a strong degree of detail in shaping his characters and plot through the screenplay (co-written with Pegg). The fish-out-of-water story which Angel finds himself in is something that can play well in this genre, but it's also been a hallmark of the action genre in films like Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars, and its fascinating to see Wright play with pre-established genre conventions while also doing his own thing for a great bulk of the film. We get a fast-paced montage of Angel at the very beginning - detailing his achievements and personality-type, so much that his character arc receives the greatest amount of moulding over the course of the film, but even less-important characters are clearly defined with much less emphasis.
It's also a clearly defined deconstruction of the previously mentioned American cop and British crime films, two subgenres which don't seem like they would go well together, but Wright pulls off a tricky balancing act. It goes without saying that the former receives much greater importance, especially in the film's final act shootout spectacular, though taking a dig at the latter certainly manages to bring attention onto that type of film for North American based audiences like myself who never grew up with them, so to speak. This idea of cultural distinctionpermeates throughout Hot Fuzz, and can even be seen in the major subplot regarding Sandford's Neighborhood Watch Alliance and what they do to those who refuse to abide by their ideas of representation.
In the past decade, Hot Fuzz hasn't really shown its age much, still very much a radiant, intelligent, and gut-busting comedy it was upon release. It's something every action/comedy film lover should have in their collection - especially the Ultimate Edition Blu-ray which houses 5 hours of extra features and multiple commentaries, including one with Wright and director Quentin Tarantino. In comparing the film with the rest of Wright's 'Cornetto Trilogy', I have to say that Hot Fuzz emerges as the funniest of the three, and the most rewarding overall. I'm happy that in this short amount of time, the film has garnered a cult audience equivalent to some of the films which are spoofed within, and its one that should only continue to grow for the sake of the greater good.
