Hot Fuzz (2007)
Very entertaining, but I rather think you’ve been watching too many films.
THE SUMMARY: An elite London police officer is reassigned to a small town in the countryside, discovering its claim of peace and safety is a lie, and the place is run by a murderous cult in pursuit of ‘the greater good.’ I saw it upon release in 2007 when I worked at a video rental store in college (long since out of business, of course), but I’d forgotten most of the plot so it was an effectively fresh viewing. To start, I feared it was a torturous British dad joke parade, but by the end, its action, comedy, and even moral themes emerged to earn high Wickies.
Movie-picker Matt has opted out of commentary, but we thank him for his nominations.
JAMIE AND JEANNE’S AI FACESWAP ART:
That’s pretty much just a photo of me, in appearance and weaponry. Though regrettably, I don’t own a FAL.
That’s pretty much also just a photo of me, circa 2013, when I was much heavier.
No, Neal Mohan - I said HAG. With an H.
THE BEST:
The action, but particularly the deaths: Once the action gets going, it really gets going. The gunfights are tense and hilarious, which is a difficult combination to achieve, but where the action is most memorable is in its shocking deaths. The first murder of the stage actors is pretty standard stuff, but then you get the follow-up of the staged highway decapitation. The burnt body after the home explosion escalates. Then there’s the journalist’s death-by-falling-spire, which is an absolutely unforgettable image. It seems like it’d be hard to maintain the shock value after that one, and the rest to me actually are tamer, but still good: the garden shear stab, and while he doesn’t die, Skinner actually tripping and falling on the model church spire is brutal too.
With the sequential ‘slasher’ style, it can be difficult to keep the audience on-edge when they know it’s coming. Hot Fuzz does it, with each death unique and surprising. Honorable mention for Danny’s flipbook, which was similarly hilarious.
The ‘greater good’ cult: The Neighborhood Watch Association, the evil cabal running the town, might as well be the CDC, or any other government agency in recent years. They’ll violate your rights all the way to killing you if it means ‘the greater good,’ or ‘if it saves just one life,’ or ‘we’re all in this together,’ or whatever other nonsense phrase they repeat to supposedly justify it. Whenever someone violates basic moral principles in pursuit of some ‘greater good’ like this, they’re the bad guy. Our culture used to understand that. You don’t build prosperity by violating the most basic rules of the world.
Propaganda through statistical deception: It’s not just in moral deception that the NWA is just like its real-life government counterparts - it’s in the construction of the propaganda too. Sandford authorities achieve their reputation for ‘safety’ and ‘peace’ by simply reclassifying and redefining what crime is. They convert murders to ‘accidents,’ in the same way our government and media often stretch to inflate ‘mass shooting’ numbers, or likewise to lower crime rates. Just like this movie, when you start treating criminals leniently, suddenly the crime rate drops quickly. But the victims don’t.
Family versus morality: There are interesting themes in Danny’s struggle deciding whether to stick with his murderous father or help Nicholas in his quest to bring justice to the town. In the end, Danny makes the correct decision in choosing justice for murder over family, but I say ‘correct’ with a warning, presumably the same reason for which Danny hesitates: the threshold to abandon family should be extremely high. The only loyalty we have that’s higher than family is to God himself, or the author of the moral rules of the universe, however you wish to understand that concept.
What does that mean in practical terms? It means we stick by family up and until egregious moral violations. Abuse of others, attacks on others, or in this case, killing others in cold blood would certainly qualify. But if your dad’s just kind of a dick or he has Trump derangement or something else that’s just annoying and not criminal? Give him a break, and stick by your family.
Timothy Dalton is a perfect villain: I get he’s famous for his Bond role, which I haven’t seen, to be fair, but to me, this guy’s just the perfect villain. He and his mustache are the definition of dastardly, particularly paired with his accent. At first I couldn’t remember where I’d seen him previously, and then it hit me - he’s a very similar antagonist in 1923, the Yellowstone prequel. And he’s great in that too. Especially when he beats up those whores, which is too graphic to show on YouTube, apparently.
Great callbacks: I’m a fan of callback comedy, and Hot Fuzz has many great examples: the ‘fascist’ and ‘hag’ crossword exchange between Nicholas and the innkeeper returns for gunfight banter, the swan that seems pointless until it isn’t, and the ketchup bit at the bar that turns life-saving, just to name a few. Run a bit into the ground - it only gets funnier. Even if my wife rolls her eyes and disagrees.
Shockingly brutal.
THE GREATER GOOD!
Fascist! Hag!
THE WORST:
Slow to start, a few irrelevant plot points: In retrospect, I can see why the movie is slow to start, and that’s because there’s setup required. We have to get all the premises about Nicholas and Sandford established, and that takes a minute. Still, it is about forty of those setup minutes until we actually get the first killing in the slasher mystery, and not all of that time is completely necessary to get to the good stuff.
The girlfriend: The scene with Nicholas informing his girlfriend of his transfer is completely irrelevant other than a few lame jokes. Their romance means nothing to the main plot, and isn’t revisited later. It should be cut for time.
Sitting around the pub talking about stuff we already know: Likewise, the scene with the Sandford cops sitting around socializing at the pub drags and doesn’t really demonstrate anything that isn’t already established. Yes, we get it - Nicholas takes his job seriously, and the other cops don’t. We already learned that at the station. Trim it down and move along.
Is the Sandford cabal… actually kind of right?: Of course I don’t mean they’re right to kill people, or they’re right to distort the truth to suit their ends, or any of the genuinely evil stuff they’re doing. I just mean… isn’t their some value in being a little more insular, and a little more skeptical or even hostile to outsiders? Looking at the attitude of the NWA versus the attitude of politicians in power in the UK and US alike right now, I watch this movie thinking ‘yeah, but - at least they don’t just let someone else take them over.’ Right or wrong otherwise, there’s something to that value and spirit, and both our countries seem to have lost it. They are seriously bending the rules, yes. But at least they aren’t bending over for conquest.
Cool backstory, don’t care.
THE RATING: 4/5 Wickies. Sort of a tale of two halves. The first is a lot of setup, which can seem boring, but the payoff in the second is worth it. The next time I say there’s no such thing as British comedy, you can remind me of Hot Fuzz. And I’ll say great - now name another. And you’ll say well, you liked Kingsman too. And then I’ll have to concede the point. I guess there are in fact a few cheeky blokes.
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NEXT WEEK: The Boondock Saints (1999)
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