The best movies get better each time you watch them. That is why I am now going to praise the 2007 cinematic masterpiece Hot Fuzz.
A couple of nights ago, I saw that the movie was on Netflix. Of course, I promptly rewatched it. You know what? It’s not just one of the best comedies of all time, it’s one of the best movies of all time. Put it up there with Casablanca and The Godfather. Strong praise, I know!
Directed by Edgar Wright and written by Wright and his longtime leading man/collaborator Simon Pegg, Hot Fuzz was released almost eight years ago. It got very positive reviews, and I remember being pretty hyped to see it. I had loved their film Shaun of the Dead, and couldn’t wait to see those guys take on the buddy cop genre. I had seen maybe one trailer and was mostly going off of the poster:
If Shaun of the Dead was Dawn of the Dead, Hot Fuzz would be Bad Boys II. Makes sense, right? Kinda. But also kinda not.
From the beginning, Hot Fuzz subverts the audience’s expectations. It begins not with a bang but with a long shot of Pegg’s character Nicholas Angel slowly walking toward the camera. Then comes a montage about what a splendid cop he is.
There are a bunch of fake-outs going on there. Pegg is playing against type — before Hot Fuzz he’d been primarily known as a likable slacker like Shaun from Shaun of the Dead or Tim from Spaced. Here, he was playing a cheerless, uptight civil servant. He’s not the sort of devil-may-care renegade popularised by Cop Cinema, he’s the straightest arrow on the force. He is so straight, in fact, that the brass at the London Police Department have decided to reassign him to the country and get him out of the way.
Soon, Angel has been relocated to the country town of Sandford. That sets up the second fake-out: Hot Fuzz isn’t just a buddy-cop movie, it’s a proper Agatha Christie-style mystery. The first time I watched it, I assumed that the colourful populace of Sandford were merely window dressing, a chance for the film to swell its cast with every working British comedian on Earth. (Which it does, of course.)
Sgt. Angel is frustrated by the willingness of the police force to write off a series of increasingly suspicious deaths as “accidents” and begins unravelling a complex real-estate scheme that links the victims. It’s a plausible mystery, and it implicates the most obvious villain in the movie — Timothy Dalton’s wonderful and dastardly shop-owner Simon Skinner.
Spoiler Warning: I’m about to give away the movie’s big twist. So maybe make sure you’ve watched it and then come back.
Dalton is a red herring that makes the eventual reveal — a ” Final ending of Clue” sort of deal where it turns out the entire town is in on it — funnier, particularly because the actual motives for the murders are so absurd. That guy wasn’t killed for poaching a land deal, he was killed because his house was an eyesore. That woman wasn’t killed in a real-estate scam gone wrong, she simply had an annoying laugh. Skinner is in fact guilty, but so is everyone else.
When you go into Hot Fuzz knowing the twist, everything changes. Rewatching it is almost like watching a different movie, and it’s also where the whole “this movie is a masterpiece” thing comes in.
For starters, Hot Fuzz has one of the richest, tightest scripts of any film I’ve seen. Hot Fuzz is so dense with gags that if you lean over to refill the popcorn bowl, you’ll miss four or five of them. Nearly every line of dialogue is either an explicit joke, a set-up to a future joke, or a call-back to a joke that was set up earlier. Some manage to be all three at once. It’s like watching an entire season of Arrested Development unfold in two hours.
The self-referential stuff is what sticks out to me each time I rewatch it. That makes sense, since so much of the film plays differently once you know what’s really going on. Most fans of the film probably remember the foreshadowing where Angel meets Joyce Cooper, the woman at the inn: She seems to call him a “fascist,” revealing after a pregnant pause that that’s just a word for the crossword she’s working on.
“Hag,” Angel appears to call her in response… before pointing to another entry on her crossword.
Much later, when the guns have come out and the two characters are shooting at each other, the insults come back in earnest. “Fascist,” Joyce spits, opening fire with a machine gun. Sgt. Angel returns fire, quickly taking her down. “Hag.”
There are so many subtle jokes like that that it’s difficult to keep track of them all. The first time Angel and his partner Danny enter the neighbourhood shop, he overhears one of the women in the Neighbourhood Watch Alliance on the radio telling the shopkeeper, “That Sergeant Angel’s in your shop, check out his arse!” Later, as he rides back into town to lay down the law, he overhears the same woman saying, “That Sergeant Angel’s back… check out his horse!”
Lines are delivered rhythmically, mixing quick repetition with snappy edits to keep the viewer off-balance and amused. Characters bounce lines to one another like handball players, and almost every line of dialogue and visual gag is eventually repeated in a different context. “That weren’t me.” “She tripped and fell on her own shears.” “A great bushy beard!” “The greater good.” “Pub?” “Yarp.”
The rampaging swan is one of the movie’s most obvious running gags. See. There’s a swan loose in Sandford, and Danny and Angel must apprehend it. They don’t catch it on their first outing, so it turns up at key moments throughout the film. The bird plays a crucial role in the final showdown. When Inspector Butterman tries to make his final getaway, it’s the swan, not the heroes, that brings him down.
There are more subtle references to the swan threaded through the script. When Angel and Danny return from their first unsuccessful attempt to capture the it, they’re suitably embarrassed. “No luck finding them swans, then?” asks woman at the shop. “It’s just the one swan, actually,” comes Danny’s reply.
Later, Angel has abandoned his murder investigation. He and Danny are back in the shop buying Cornettos. That earlier line finally echoes: “No luck finding them killers, then?” asks the clerk. “It’s just the one killer, actually,” replies Danny. Hearing that, Angel finally has his epiphany — it’s not one killer, it’s several.
That epiphany sets up what might be my favourite visual gag in the entire movie. Sgt. Angel is eating his Cornetto and stewing over what Danny just said, and he finally puts it all together. He turns to Danny with his mouth covered in ice cream and tells him to punch it. Danny, for some reason, decides to wolf down his Cornetto before hitting the gas.
Every time I see that scene, I laugh. I’m laughing right now, looking at the gif.
As much praise as the script deserves, the movie’s visual humour is just as good. The primary visual joke is that Hot Fuzz apes the smash-cuts and hyperactive visuals popularised by Michael Bay — call it “Bayhem,” if you want — but uses those techniques to punctuate scenes of extreme mundanity. The disconnect between the editing and camerawork and the actual events on-screen is good for a grin — SMASH CUT TO a cop preparing to do paperwork…. EXTREME CLOSE-UP ON a man watering a plant.
As the story progresses, those jokes get more specific and pronounced. One of my favourites comes after Danny and Angel uncover a cache of weapons at the farm outside town. Among the guns and grenades they find a rusty old sea-mine. They prod it. It begins ticking. They flee the building, which leads to this shot:
It’s a perfect recreation of a shot we’ve seen in a hundred action movies. The camera sweeps out, tracking quickly backwards as the heroes flee a building. The moment the whole building is in the shot…. BOOM, it explodes, propelling them forward and just out of harm’s way. The punch line, of course, being that the mine doesn’t actually explode. We get that great shot, but none of the payoff.
In its last quarter, Hot Fuzz finally becomes the guns-blazing, full-on Michael Bay parody we were promised. I’ve always felt a touch let down by this part of the movie, mostly because the script makes a few shortcuts that fall short of the precedent set by everything leading up to them. (Angel immediately convinces the other cops that Inspector Butterman is evil despite the fact that they have mocked him for the entire film, the pacing finally starts to get a bit out of hand, the last five minutes should have been cut.)
The action sequences have so many good gags that I’m willing to forgive a few minor missteps. There’s the little stuff, like the fascist/hag joke I mentioned earlier, or the fact that the old guy in the big puffy jacket really was carrying a shotgun under it this entire time.
The grand finale is also loaded with explicit Michael Bay tributes. There’s the camera rotating around our heroes…
…the two of them leaping through the air while dual-wielding pistols:
…there’s the off-kilter, airborne car that enters from the top of the frame in extreme slow-mo…
…and there’s the pull-back shot of the heroes looking up as a helicopter flies into the frame:
One of the biggest criticisms of Michael Bay-style filmmaking is the constant, frantic editing. No shot lasts more than a second, and most are in and out in a fraction of that time. It’s one of those things that I’ve found difficult to unsee; the moment I realised that no Michael Bay action sequence holds a shot, I became unable to focus while watching his movies.
The action in Hot Fuzz goes for something similar, and while it must be said that Edgar Wright and his editor, Chris Dickens, aren’t as good at it as Bay and his team, the joke still works, particularly in its more extreme examples. One of my favourite visual gags is actually pretty easy to miss. It’s this one:
Dr. Hatcher has Danny and Angel dead to rights. He pumps a round into the chamber of his shotgun… and Wright and Dickens cram an incredible number of quick-cuts into that single quick motion. Check it out in slow-mo:
Eight different camera angles! For an action that takes about one second. It might be the best Michael Bay joke in the whole movie.
Early in the movie, Danny is peppering Sgt. Angel with questions about his action-packed tenure as a London policeman. Has he ever smoked a fool? Has he ever been in a high-speed chase? Has he ever fired his gun up into the air and gone “arrrrrrrr!”
Danny demonstrates what he’s talking about — it’s a scene from Point Break where Keanu Reeves has a clear shot at Patrick Swayze’s bank robber but just can’t do it because he and Swayze have become surf bros. Instead, Keanu empties his clip into the air and cries out in frustration.
No, Angel says, he’s never done that.
Later, Danny and Angel bond over a drunken, late-night viewing of Point Break and Bad Boys II. We even get to watch them as they watch the scene in question:
So of course, at the end of the movie, Danny finds himself with a clear shot on his evil lunatic father. And just like Keanu, he can’t do it:
That’s Hot Fuzz. It’s a movie so rich that it pulls threads from other movies and weaves them into itself, eventually doubling and even tripling back. Not a second is wasted; every joke eventually ricochets and hits you when you didn’t expect it.
It’s operating on a different level of sophistication from the films to which it pays tribute, but that tribute is genuine: Hot Fuzz believes in the power of dumb action movies, and it delivers on that belief straight through until the credits roll. It’s one of the smartest, funniest, most rewarding movies I’ve seen. Hot Fuzz is a god damned masterpiece.
Comments
73 responses to “Hot Fuzz Is A God Damned Masterpiece”
Plus, it stars @markserrels.
Wait what???
#TrueStory
Code Y is just referencing the fact that Serrels looks uncannily like Simon Pegg.
And I still can’t believe “Yarp” guy was The Hound……
Me either. Didn’t click till someone pointed it out to me the other week.
Yarp.
Narp?
I’ve heard that called the single greatest comedic line reading of all time.
I’m not convinced they were far wrong.
I don’t have anything against it, I’m just not a great fan of Simon Pegg, so I don’t particularly love it.
It’s truly a great movie. So many quotable lines!
It really is.
In fact…Ima go watch it right now!
Is it true that there is a place in a man’s head that, if you shoot it, it will blow up …?
thats exactly what i thought of when you said “so many great lines”
Stay back! Or the gingernut gets it!
I love that they killed the newspaper journalist over typos…
Also:
“Mr Staker. Mr Peter Ian Staker.”
“P.I. Staker? Pisstaker? COME ON!”
[later] “so, Mr Staker…”
Believe it or not we had a Pamela Irene Staker as our school chaplain, funny enough she told us her initials were pis and we all giggled but unfortunately that movie wasn’t at that point in time….
…..ah Pam I’ll never forget you
I just love all the joke lines that turn into actual truths/realities like this one, also the one where the detective say that they should ring everyone up in the phonebook from (what seemingly sounds like a made-up name) Aaron A Anderson, but then later on you find out that the name is actually of someone in town (think the kid at the end says that’s his name? Though it doesnt make sense for a kid to be in the phonebook)
“When’s your birthday?”
“22nd of February.”
“What year?”
“Every year.”
“Get out!”
Danny Butterman: Where’s the trolley boy?
Nicholas Angel: In the freezer.
Danny Butterman: Did you say “cool off?”
Nicholas Angel: No I didn’t say anything…
Danny Butterman: Shame.
Nicholas Angel: Well, there was the bit that you missed where I distracted him with the cuddly monkey then I said “play time’s over” and I hit him in the head with the peace lily.
Danny Butterman: You’re off the fuckin’ chain!
Cause we all sell apples round here, don’t we?
Your mum sells apples Andy.
and raspberries…
I forgot that this is the kind of thing Americans call ‘subtle’. No wonder that this movie would have blown their minds.
For subtle jokes I much prefer the scene in Shaun of the Dead where Ed describes the plan for the next day and it foreshadows every event for the rest of the movie.
I think my favourite Shaun of the Dead detail is the parallel mornings playing out almost exactly the same, especially the runner going past.
Another subtle joke in Shaun of the Dead that most don’t get at first?
Anyone who says ‘You’ve got red on you…’ dies.
Did the same thing when I saw it pop up. That and Shaun of the Dead are some of the best comedies. Could take or leave The Worlds End…
Absolutely agreed. I didn’t like TWE much myself. Was ok for a watch but thats about it. But Hot Fuzz and SOTD are classics.
Yeah I think as part of the Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy; see it for sure. But as far as being almost infinitely rewatchable it certainly doesn’t live up to the first two.
Man, I got so many blank, judging stares in Uni when I said in my Film/Video class that this was one of my favorite movies….
I didn’t like it…
I saw The Worlds End a few weeks ago, and although it seems to get a lot of flack for not being as fantastic as Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead, I thought it was hilarious. Same kind of subtle references and clever jokes that are all connected to eachother. Edgar Wright’s style of writing is brilliant. Makes me genuinely sad that he left the AntMan film.
This. I am convinced that I am going to sit through another generic Marvel superhero movie, and just cry thinking about what might have been…
I dunno, I couldn’t actually finish The Worlds End. I’ve tried a couple times and turned it off out of boredom and disappointment every time. It feels like the actors are pausing for a laugh track that never got edited in for jokes which aren’t funny. Like first-year uni students who think that getting high or drunk is hilarious.
It definitely isn’t as good as the others, and the characters are a bit 1 dimensional, but I still think the film unfairly gets a hard time. The ending does get a bit loopy too I’ll admit, but the epic rant at the end was still worth seeing.
I wholeheartedly agree Mark, it is such an awesome movie! As a film student, i think it’s great how it mixes a couple of genres successfully, being horror/thriller, action and comedy and it just comes off as epic!
Also, as other posters pointed out there are many great quotable lines as well =)
Err, this piece wasn’t from Mark, it was Kirk. Though I do wonder what Mr Serrels opinion on the movie is?
Mark didn’t write this one, he starred in it.
Simon Pegg’s films do little for me which is odd becauseI’m a huge fan of Spaced.
I didn’t really care for it the first time I saw it. It felt really slow to start. I watched it about a year later when I was in a slightly different mood and absolutely loved it.
Everyone and their mums is packing ’round here.
Really, like who?
Like who?
Farmers.
Who else?
Farmers Mum’s.
I remember their work from the UK sketch comedy show Big Train, so I remember the hype around Shaun of the Dead and knew I had to see it. However, I’m not a zombie fan, and I grew up on 80’s buddy cop movies, so Hot Fuzz has always been my favourite Pegg/Front/Wright movie.
Paul was pretty good too!
Unless I’m missing something, it’s not available on Australian Netflix 🙁
Good thing I have it on Blu Ray anyway 🙂
Has that always been the case? I’m sure it was suggesting it to me this morning… =S
Amen. This is such a great movie. I really wished The World’s End had been as up to par as this and Shaun of the Dead.
Yep. Although when Hot Fuzz came out I didn’t like it as much as SotD, and it grew on me. The World’s End grew on me too at second viewing. Not as good as the others, but better than I first thought.
We know 🙂
By the power of Greyskull!
Love Simon Pegg, love this movie. +1 on the entire article. If you haven’t seen the series Spaced, you owe it to yourself to watch it many times over.
Disappointed it isn’t on Netflix 🙁
All three of Wright’s “Cornetto Trilogy” of films are amazing in their own right. Each one riffs on the structure and tropes of the genre it plays in – zombie/post-apocalypse, buddy cop/action, and sci-fi/invasion. They are love letters to (and satires of) these genres, populated by great character actors and incredibly layered scripts and visual puns. They all get better with every rewatch.
I like this thing where Netflix shows you a film you’ve already seen but loved the shit out of and you’re like, “Fuckit, why not, it’s right there, I’ll watch that.”
I did that with Red on the weekend. Loved every single damn minute.
Helen Mirren is amazing.
Sorry haha That was a derp on my behalf, i’ve read too many (or apparently, too few) of Mark’s articles =P
Yes!
You’re off the funking chain!
Please tell me you guys have noticed the “take out all the little people and get to walk away with the cuddly monkey”
Yeh love this movie. It definitely lends itself well to repeated viewings, like u pick up on different things. Noticed this with all 3 movies from the Cornetto trilogy actually.
This reminds me of the insanely high death toll of midsomer murders, where it seems that a lot of people go there to die despite the size of midsomer county & the death toll is in the high 100’s & every episode normally has at least 5 deaths , tell me that this series & hot fuzz has made the english countryside as deadly as living in oz
Yeah, but I had a buddy explain to me (disclaimer: we were both quite drunk at the time, so this may not make sense sober) why Midsomer had so many people constantly moving to it despite the high murder count.
1. People get offed. 5 or so in a short space of time. At least one, if not more of those people owned houses in Midsomer.
2. People getting offed at a high rate in a beautiful place in the country? Why of course the family will sell the house to try and make a profit.
3. More people move to Midsomer.
4. More people means more chance of murder.
5. People get offed.
6. Reputation for Midsomer as a murder central area spreads.
7. People get offed.
8. Family panics, as the housing market is bombing, so they sell the houses at a cut-rate price to try and attract a buyer NOW before even more people get offed.
9. Low price housing attracts ex-crims, people who need to get away quickly from whatever secret they have in their life, also attracting people who would not consider Midsomer because of lingering secrets/hatred/feuds in the area because it’s so damn cheap.
10. Rinse the blood of the carpet and go back to step one.
This is fantastic.
If those gifs were all animated, thank internet jesus for my animated gif blocker. :/
In their defence, they were great gifs.
Totally agree. This movie is one of those that I thought was “just ok” the first time and just got better and better the more times I watched it.
Angel: “You’ve got a moustache.”
Andy: “I know.”
Those who have seen it will know. Haha! Oh and “Mornin’ Angle”.
“You want to feel like a big man in a small town? Fuck off up the model village.”
Case closed.
I’ve been saying this for years! So glad other people get it!
Hot Fuzz is so much better than Shaun of the Dead (which was great). You have to really love a genre to parody it well. I’m going to watch it again tonight.
So pumped!
So did you guys know there’s talk of a second cornetto trilogy? As they just sold their production company but are being kept on to run it I believe.