Written by Harry Barber
How does this help my work? He'll bend over backwards for the tiniest scrap of information on what these two are up to next. He's a cheap bastard but an entire review of Hot Fuzz is worth it's weight in gold to him. So I made sure to triple space, use a huge font and print on cardboard when handing it in.
Now with that bit of gloating out of the way, let's get to the review. It's worth a moment to look back at the work of Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright to get a proper perspective for Hot Fuzz. They first worked together on the British sitcom Spaced. Wright directed and Pegg starred. Pegg also wrote the show along with his costar Jessica Stevenson. While working on a very basic level like Friends, it vaulted well beyond that show with seemingly endless layers of pop culture references and a far more realistic take on the lives of young adults. Wright's camera work was highly creative, adding energy to even the simplest of scenes. And yes, he too was constantly giving homage to his pop culture heroes. Shaun of the Dead was the logical next step as they mined their love of zombie movies (if you watched Spaced, you knew this was coming) for a great one of their own. Like George Romero, they used the zombie movie for some commentary and laughs. And they never made fun of zombie movies for laughs, instead being very reverential and finding laughs in the characters instead. Like Spaced, it has a ton of pop culture references, sometimes of Spaced itself.
Hot Fuzz takes the same approach to buddy cop action movies that Shaun of the Dead took with zombie movies. They clearly love action movies dearly and find lots to laugh about without actually making action movies the butt of the joke. Pegg plays Nicholas Angel, a London cop so damn good at his job that he gets promoted and shipped to a sleepy little town so he'll stop making all the other London cops look bad. Pretty soon he's paired with Danny (Nick Frost, who was Pegg's sidekick in both Spaced and Shaun), a far less effective cop. Danny quickly begins to idolize Angel, who seems to be everything he wanted to be as a cop.
The town is painfully quiet. Too quiet. Angel is going bug nutty until a gruesome car crash bumps off a theater director and the star of his play. Angel believes this to be a murder but is but the Chief Inspector (Jim Broadbent) sweeps it under the rug as an accident. Similarly this is the answer to a series of other brutal deaths. Angel can't take it and eventually does what all good movie cops do, go vigilante. But thanks to a drunken viewing of Point Break and Bad Boys II, he learns how to do it with style. Pretty soon they have themselves a war with a culture so devoted to smothering safety that it is willing to kill to keep things exactly the same. Funny and brilliantly critical of current culture while hiding behind over the top action. That's damn good writing.
The beauty of the collective work of Pegg, Wright and Frost is both their chemistry and their raging love of pop culture. It infuses everything they do which could almost lead to them being criticized as unoriginal but to do so misses the point. The director Jim Jarmusch once said "Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent." This trio does just that and the result is massively enjoyable work that rewards repeat viewings with endless new details.
Pure fried gold baby.
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Monday, 16 April 2007 16:58
If you want to work around here, there's an important thing to know and exploit: Shea's fetishistic adoration of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg. Never mention either or both of their names in his presence if you ever hope to get away in less than an hour. That's how long he'll go on about Spaced and Shaun of the Dead. Mind you, he's not wrong, those are truly great but he gets a bit creepy in his obsession on the topic.
How does this help my work? He'll bend over backwards for the tiniest scrap of information on what these two are up to next. He's a cheap bastard but an entire review of Hot Fuzz is worth it's weight in gold to him. So I made sure to triple space, use a huge font and print on cardboard when handing it in.Now with that bit of gloating out of the way, let's get to the review. It's worth a moment to look back at the work of Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright to get a proper perspective for Hot Fuzz. They first worked together on the British sitcom Spaced. Wright directed and Pegg starred. Pegg also wrote the show along with his costar Jessica Stevenson. While working on a very basic level like Friends, it vaulted well beyond that show with seemingly endless layers of pop culture references and a far more realistic take on the lives of young adults. Wright's camera work was highly creative, adding energy to even the simplest of scenes. And yes, he too was constantly giving homage to his pop culture heroes. Shaun of the Dead was the logical next step as they mined their love of zombie movies (if you watched Spaced, you knew this was coming) for a great one of their own. Like George Romero, they used the zombie movie for some commentary and laughs. And they never made fun of zombie movies for laughs, instead being very reverential and finding laughs in the characters instead. Like Spaced, it has a ton of pop culture references, sometimes of Spaced itself.
Hot Fuzz takes the same approach to buddy cop action movies that Shaun of the Dead took with zombie movies. They clearly love action movies dearly and find lots to laugh about without actually making action movies the butt of the joke. Pegg plays Nicholas Angel, a London cop so damn good at his job that he gets promoted and shipped to a sleepy little town so he'll stop making all the other London cops look bad. Pretty soon he's paired with Danny (Nick Frost, who was Pegg's sidekick in both Spaced and Shaun), a far less effective cop. Danny quickly begins to idolize Angel, who seems to be everything he wanted to be as a cop.
The town is painfully quiet. Too quiet. Angel is going bug nutty until a gruesome car crash bumps off a theater director and the star of his play. Angel believes this to be a murder but is but the Chief Inspector (Jim Broadbent) sweeps it under the rug as an accident. Similarly this is the answer to a series of other brutal deaths. Angel can't take it and eventually does what all good movie cops do, go vigilante. But thanks to a drunken viewing of Point Break and Bad Boys II, he learns how to do it with style. Pretty soon they have themselves a war with a culture so devoted to smothering safety that it is willing to kill to keep things exactly the same. Funny and brilliantly critical of current culture while hiding behind over the top action. That's damn good writing.
The beauty of the collective work of Pegg, Wright and Frost is both their chemistry and their raging love of pop culture. It infuses everything they do which could almost lead to them being criticized as unoriginal but to do so misses the point. The director Jim Jarmusch once said "Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent." This trio does just that and the result is massively enjoyable work that rewards repeat viewings with endless new details.
Pure fried gold baby.
- This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Last Updated on Monday, 16 April 2007 17:16
