OK another film analysis is coming at you just now and so I thought I would follow my review of Shaun of the Dead with a review of Edgar Wright's second film, the action packed comedy, Hot Fuzz, released back in 2006. So without much ado about much, let's get on with it.
The film follows Sgt. Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) a extremely dedicated and highly decorated police officer in the London metropolitan police force. However his colleagues think he does his job too well and in doing so makes the rest of them look bad, so he is seconded to a peaceful village, Sandford, in Gloucestershire. On his arrival, Angel arrests a bunch of underage youths in the local pub, as well as drunken man, Danny (Nick Frost) who soon turns out to be his new fellow police officer partner. The next day at the station, Angel meets with the rest of the police officers, and the local inspector Frank Butterman (Jim Broadbent) who is also Danny's father. Angel at first struggles to adapt to the slow paced life in Sandford, and his fellow police colleagues mock him as well. But its not long before a bizzare series of "accidents" happen in the village, starting with the deaths of Martin Blower (David Threlfall) and Eve Draper (Lucy Punch) who are found decapitated on a country road, in supposed car accident (or traffic collision as Angel points out to Danny). After this another so called accident occurs, when local businessman, George Merchant (Ron Cook) is blown up in his own home. At this point Angel becomes suspicious of these so called accidents, especially the following day where the local news journalist, Tim Messenger (Adam Buxton) asks to speak privately with him during a village fete, but before Angel can, Tim is decapitated by a falling statue from the church tower. Angel grows even more convinced that Messenger's death was a murder as were the other deaths, but again his fellow police officers and Frank are all dismissive.
The following day however, on Danny's birthday, Angel goes into town and goes to the local plant store, where he looks to buy a Japenese peace lilly for Danny (as he owns one himself). The owner of the store, Leslie Tiller (Anne Reid) reveals to Danny information of a property deal involving, the local supermarket manager, Simon Skinner (Timothy Dalton) who goes out to get his note book to record the info, when all of sudden a cloaked figure stabs Leslie in the throat with gardening shears. Angel chases the cloaked figure through a field but he loses sight of them, as the masked murderer flees. Back at the station Angel is now totally convinced that Leslie was murdered and the other deaths were murders as well, and he goes to the Somerfield supermarket, managed by Skinner, and confronts him. Skinner naturally denies being involved in any of the deaths, and he let's him "spool through" the supermarket's security video footage which shows that he was there all day. After this Angel starts to feel disappointed and that he is getting nowhere, but then it dawns on him there could be more than one killer. Angel takes this theory to Frank who is again dismissive, telling him that the village's former predecessor to Angel suffered the same delusions and drove him round the bend. Frank advises Angel to sleep on it and if he feels the same way in the morning they will do something about it.
On returning to his hotel room, Angel is attacked by a cloaked figure, who turns out to be the local trolley man, Michael (Rory McCann). Angel knocks him unconscious with his Japenese peace lilly, and picks up Michael's radio, on which we hear Skinner's voice, Angel pretends to be Michael, and Skinner gives him the command to go to the church. On arriving at the church we see Skinner and all the other members of the Neighbourhood Watch Alliance (NWA for short) are there, all dressed in black cloaks. Angel soon arrives and confronts them all, as the NWA are about to capture him, Angel runs for it but is soon stopped by Danny who stabs him in the chest. Later on Danny drives out of the town and let's Angel out of his car boot, as he reveals that he use a sachet of tomato ketchup to make it look like he had stabbed him. Angel tries to persuade Danny to come with him and arrest the NWA, but Danny refuses as he says his dad would make it all disappear, leaving Angel with no option but to leave. Angel however at a petrol station sees a couple of DVDs, Point Break and Bad Boys II (which he and Danny watched earlier in the film) which inspires Angel to head back to the village and confront the NWA and put an end to their reign once and for all.
Hot Fuzz for me is even more entertaining than Shaun of the dead was, as it is the perfect mixture of action and suspense. Here, the director, Edar Wright, and stars Pegg and Frost make a really amusing homage to all the Hollywood action films you may have seen. And its nice how they take the rustic film setting of the village, and by the end we see the village has been turned into a wild west shootout as Angel takes on the villanous NWA. The film also has a really good plot as it has more of a structure to it than Shaun of the dead had, which was basically trying to evade and survive the zombie outbreak, but here we have a mystery which Angel has to solve.
The film also has some really entertaining action sequences, particularly the big long shootout in the village near the end of the film, where Angel goes back to the town to take down the NWA. And in those scenes its almost like watching a video game, where the villagers, even the pensioners all have shotguns and and 9mm berettas! Hot Fuzz also even pokes fun at Shaun of the Dead in a couple of scenes, especially in the scene where Danny and Angel are in the supermarket, and Angel chases a shoplifter, while Danny looks at the DVDs and he drops one, which is the cover of Shaun of the Dead (which is re-named Zombies Party). The other scene is of course where they are in gardens chasing after the shoplifter, and Angel turns to Danny and says "what's the matter, Danny, haven't you ever taken a shortcut before?" and he proceeds to leap over the garden fences with athletic ease (unlike Shaun does in SOTD).
The performances in Hot Fuzz are also excellent, with Pegg in the main role as Nicholas Angel doing a great job, playing the straight man, about as straight as you can, as Angel is a man who takes everything he does so seriously, and he can't switch off his job, as he lives and breaths it, and its up to Danny to try and lighten him up. One of Pegg's most amusing scenes in the film is when he runs after the shoplifter and stops and gasps for breath, and says angrily "you mothers!" and we see a group of mothers pushing prams. I also like it when Angel puts a pound in the police station's swearbox when he angrily tells them that "Leslie Tillers was fucking murdered!", and when he swears again, Danny puts in a pound for him, and he says "thank you, Danny!". Nick Frost is also pretty good as Danny, with whom the two of them have a close friendship, which isn't quite homo-erotic, but in the one scene where they share a beer round at Danny's house, Danny tells him how Angel can switch off from his job, and you think he might kiss him! (but of course he doesn't and instead shows him a couple of DVDs). This gives a funny piece of dialogue where Danny holds up two DVDs to Angel and says "Point Break or Bad Boys II?" and Angel asks "which one would you think I would prefer?" and Danny says "no, which one do you want to watch first?". Jim Broadbent who is always reliable is similarly excellent here as Frank Butterman, who is so cheerful and benign on the outside, but he harbours a dark secret underneath it all. Broadbent's funniest moment in the film comes when Frank says to Angel, about his predecessor in Sanford that he had something Angel doesn't, who asks what that is, and Frank says "a great big bushy beard!".
The supporting cast are also really good, including Billie Whitelaw, as Joyce Cooper, the owner of the hotel that Angel stays at, and the two of them share a moment when she is trying to complete a crossword, and she says "fascist" to Angel, when she is reading out the answer to a clue in the crossword. And Angel in response says "hag" to her, responding with the answer to another crossword clue, which they actually repeat those words to each other later on during the village gunfight. Edward Woodward also does a fine job in a small role as the NWA member, Tom Weaver, who monitors the village's security, and is more concerned with a statue-esque clown than the local hoodies, and he says "if we down come down soon on these clowns, we could be up to our balls in jugglers!". Paul Freeman also does a great job as the local Reverend, Philip Shooter, who tries to remonstrate with Angel when he comes back into the village to fight the NWA, and Angel says "I know what's right and wrong, and I have good grace to know which is which", to which the rev replies "fuck off, grasshopper" and gets out his guns.
Paddy Considine and Rafe Spall also make a funny double act, as the two police officers, nicknamed the two Andies (Andy Wainright and Cartwright), with Considine being the funniest out of the two of them. Considine get's some really funny lines especially when he keeps taunting Angel, as he refuses to believe his conspiracy theories about the deaths in the village, and he says "what absolute horseshit!". And also the scene in the supermarket where the cops fight against the supermarket butchers, who throw knifes at them, and Considine get's covered in a jar of sauce, which is smashed, and he screams in pain, but he says to his partner "its ok, Andy, its only bolognese!". Also in another funny, the Andies make good use of the swear box installed in the police station, where officers are fined money for saying the f-word, b-word, or c-word. In smaller roles still, Olivia Coleman is good as the local sultry female police officer, who says she "likes a good midnight gobble!", and Kevin Eldon as the clueless Sgt. Tony Fisher, who on being introduce sits infront of a whiteboard, with a list of words that inadvertently describe him as being "useless" etc.
And last but not least, Timothy Dalton, who for me steals the show, and is simply brilliant as the villanous Simon Skinner, who makes no bones of his duplicity and even keeps rubbing it in, in front of Angel. And he keepss making some not so subtle threats to the people who are soon to be bumped off, such as to Eve Draper when he says "Oh, I'm sure if we bashed your head in, all sorts of secrets would come tumbling out!". Dalton has quite a few other funny lines, especially in his first scene where he runs into Angel, as he jogs with him and says "lock me up! I'm a slasher, a slasher of prices!". I also like the moment where Angel confronts him in his office which his theory of how he is behind the murders, and Skinner says he was there all day, and he can check the security footage, and he says "do feel free to spool through", and he smiles standing in front of photo of him smiling in the exact same pose!
Director Edgar Wright does a terrific job here in the film, and he keeps the action going at a fast pace, and he does a really good job at directing the action scenes, and he makes great use of the village setting, which was filmed in Wells in Somerset (which is Wright's hometown). Wright also employs again the use of frantic paced zoom in shots, just like he did in Shaun of the Dead, and there are some really funny moments, particularly in the pub where we see extreme close ups of pints being pulled. In other shots we get fast cuts of Angel's travel to Sandford by train and taxi, and also the scene where Angel goes into the petrol station near the end and pays for some bottles of paintspray and sunglasses, and he hands over the money, and we see the change given back, and a bit of a cover of a Cornetto ice cream!
And finally worthy of note is the film's score by David Arnold, who did numerous James Bond scores at that time, and its a good one, which has plenty of dramatic passages in there, as well as one or two homages to the cheesy guitar driven action music scene in plenty of Hollywood movies.
So that's it for my rather exhaustive entry on Hot Fuzz, which is a really entertaining British action comedy, and is well worth a watch if you haven't already seen it.
And I will leave it there.
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