STORY STUDY - MEDIUM: FILM “Hot Fuzz”

“My my, here come the fuzz…”

Directed by Edgar Wright, and written by Wright & Simon Pegg, Hot Fuzz is the story of the best cop working in the London Metropolitan Police Service, Police Constable Nicholas Angel. Angel is promoted to Sergeant, but is relocated to Sandford, Gloucestershire, a crime-free village.

He makes enemies among the other police officers, mainly because he finds them lazy, and they believe he thinks he’s better than everyone. Only one cop admires him: the son of Angel’s superior, who wants to experience “real” police action… aka the kind of action you’d see in cop movies.

However, once Angel arrives, brutal “accidents” fall upon the citizens, and only Angel believes that there is something more sinister going on.

The second film in Wright’s “Cornetto Trilogy,” the film uses the same manic energy and face paced dialogue and surreal/dark humor that is also prevalent in The World’s End. All the characters are zany and unique, from the two policemen called the Andies, to a big henchman who says “yarp.”

The violence. Oh, the violence. When I first saw this film, it really caught me off-guard with how violent and darkly humorous the kill scenes are. To give one away, let’s just say I don’t like seeing a decapitated head just lying there. And that’s one of the tamer kills in the film.

The mystery itself is a clever analysis of how the motive of the crime in cop films can sometimes just be petty.

The aptly named Angel goes through an obvious character arc: he’s married to his job and doesn’t know how to “turn off.” Guess how his character changes by the end of it. Though, the clever part of his change is that he embraces the violent action clichés found in the films that he’s shown, and uses it in the climax.

I was aware of the film because it was Wright’s follow-up to Shaun of the Dead, the first film in the Cornetto Trilogy, and caught it on TV. My first viewing started with me watching the last 3/4th of it, but I still was able to understand what it was about.

Hot Fuzz is insane, hilarious, smart, and, like with Wright’s other works, absolutely rewatchable. Watch it once for the plot and spectacle, but the next time, listen to the character’s dialogue, and you’ll catch set-up to jokes. Look at the background, and hear the sound effects. They’re funny gags if you catch them.