Hot Fuzz: Locked & Loaded

 Posted by: Tim
The filmmakers’ modus operandi for Hot Fuzz was to plunder genre conventions – and then upend them. This is established at the beginning of the movie, when Simon Pegg’s character Nicholas Angel gets transferred to Sandford because he is just too good at his job. Edgar Wright says, “In many seminal cop movies, an officer gets demoted or sent away because they f--ked up or killed somebody. So we wrote this cop character whose arrest record is 400% higher than any of his  other officers in the Met[ropolitan London Police] and, rather than being commended for his efforts, he’s sidelined.” Similarly, instead of the usual three-act structure employed by most action movies, Wright and Pegg split Hot Fuzz into two very distinct sections; the first features deliberate restraint and focuses on inactivity, as Angel is forced to deal with missing swans, church fairs, and a village in which nothing of any note seems to happen...save for a few suspicious deaths.
 
The second half of the film, in which Angel takes arms against a sea of troubles, shifts into top gear with car chases, explosions and John Woo-esque gunplay. Wright clarifies, “We didn’t want to destroy the idyll of the gentle English countryside by going too over-the-top right from the start; the tone shifts slowly. The film is also structured around the development of Simon and Nick Frost’s characters’ relationship. “The big dramatic shift actually happens before the mayhem kicks in; Danny encourages Angel to join him in watching Point Break and Bad Boys II back-toback and, because it's late, they both fall asleep in front of the second DVD. I liked the idea that, even though they’re asleep, the Michael Bay-isms of that movie are permeating their subconscious. After that point, Angel becomes more like a badass cop!” Wright and Pegg sum up the narrative’s evolution from quaint British murder mystery into explosive American-style action movie with a defining descriptive phrase – “popcorn logic.” “It’s Bruckheimer’s Law,” says Pegg, referring to top movie producer Jerry Bruckheimer (Bad Boys II et al.).
 
“We’re always very thorough about the logic of the plot, about how everything has to be feasible. But with popcorn logic, we allow for how a lot of action movies demand that you suspend your disbelief a little bit more. Reality gets heightened so, at times, we do things in the movie that are purposefully unlikely; flying through the air for ten seconds firing guns, for example. And the climax is just crazy; it’s like a video game, where there are lots of levels Angel and Danny have to blast through before reaching the Big Boss.” Sedate though the first half of the movie may be, Wright’s directorial style is not. “He never fails to amaze me. ‘He’s a machine, and he absolutely will not stop!’” marvels Pegg, quoting The Terminator. “The amount of rigs we had on this movie – I’d never seen so many. We had a camera on a rickshaw, we had a camera on a Segway, like the one Gob rides in Arrested Development…  “Edgar’s always trying to evolve his style. He’s done some fabulous stuff with flashbacks in Hot Fuzz, including that classic Brian De Palma approach where – in, say, Dressed to Kill – you revisit a scene you’ve seen before but this time you notice something else in the shot that you didn’t the first time.” De Palma isn’t the only director that Wright pays homage to in Hot Fuzz; there are bows to everyone from Dario Argento to Tony Scott studded throughout the movie. Wright explains, “I re-immersed myself in all my favorite cop and action movies and shot Hot Fuzz in that style, so this small-town story is given the expansive big-screen feeling of a Michael Mann film.” Also amped up in this telling are the most ordinary aspects of police work. “When we interviewed police officers and asked what the one part of the job is that you never see dramatized on film, they all said ‘the paperwork!’” laughs Wright. “When you go into these stations, for any offense – be it major or minor – you see policemen hunched over desks, filling out endless forms. So there is a lot of paperwork depicted in Hot Fuzz, but it’s done Man on Fire-style! In terms of the visuals, the idea was to take the quite mundane aspects of police work and try to make them look really flashy and muscular.”
 
Also thinking in muscular terms, what with the movie’s action sequences of car chases, fistfights, gunplay, horse-riding, and general athleticism, Pegg knew that Hot Fuzz would present something of a physical challenge for him. Not that this realization necessarily occurred to him while writing it with Wright; “when you write, you’re just writing specifically from the point of view of a particular character,” Pegg explains. “Later, when I was doubled up in agony because I’d strained my quad muscles running down the street, I was thinking, ‘You f--king bastard! Why did you write this ten-mile chase sequence for Angel!’” So as not to be completely incapacitated by the scripted action, Pegg did get into shape for filming; he embarked upon a regimen that required the attention of no fewer than three personal trainers and went on a strict diet that forbade him from eating after 8 P.M. during production. “I actually had it written into his contract,” confides Nira Park. “But Simon got completely obsessed, and during the course of filming he lost weight; his costumes kept having to be taken in.” During location shooting in Wells, Pegg also decided to run, every morning, the two miles from the rented cottage he shared with Frost to production headquarters. Frost, on the other hand, decided that for his character, a strict physical regimen was not a necessity, and made the daily commute by car. “I would wave to Simon as we drove past,” he recalls. “And I never once stopped to give him a lift!” Frost’s minimized preparation also found him disregarding a list of movies that Wright and Pegg had given him to watch; “I saw Bad Boys II – and that was it,” he admits.
 
“I did talk to Somerset policemen about crime there; they told me about a low-speed tractor chase.” For Pegg, playing Angel posed the biggest challenge of his career – and not just because of the physical demands. He notes, “I couldn’t rely on any of my tricks with him, because Angel’s not goofy; he’s absolutely focused all the time. You don’t see him smile until halfway through the film; he’s like a robot. You could argue that in Shaun I was just doing a different version of Tim [from Spaced], or more accurately a version of myself, whereas with Hot Fuzz it’s a total change.” Jim Broadbent offers, “Simon set the tone for the acting for the rest of us. It’s very funny the way Angel takes everything so seriously, and Simon played it straight down the line.” When it came time for the serious business of learning to handle guns, Pegg and Frost both knuckled up. “I love rough-and-tumble,” Frost says. “I’ve been practicing being an action hero for 25 years, so this felt great. I always try to take things in stride, but having two handguns, wearing a flak jacket, and having your best mate beside you – well, you can’t help but walk with a swagger.”
 
Frost and Pegg grew fond enough of their guns to christen them Emma and Sarah. The movie itself was christened Hot Fuzz early on. Pegg laughs, “It’s Edgar’s title; he wanted it to sound a ‘70s movie. Fuzz and Super Fuzz had already been taken decades earlier, so...” Wright adds, “It’s also a tribute to the two-word titles of the ‘80s and ‘90s that often detailed the spirit of the film, if not the plot; Sudden Impact, Lethal Weapon, Die Hard – all brilliant examples. But the further you dive into the bargain bin, there’s Double Team, Cold Heat…I will be proud to add Hot Fuzz to the top of that pile!”
 
The bargain bin will have to wait a while, as Hot Fuzz opened at #1 in the U.K. and Ireland in February 2007 to the biggest numbers of the year so far. The opening weekend numbers were the sixth-biggest ever for a comedy in the U.K. and Ireland. Wright says, “I hope that people in other countries enjoy our attempt to take the Yanks on at their own game. Having worked in this genre now, I’ve come out of it with even more respect for directors like Michael Bay who can marshal enormous action scenes. Also, I would love it if police recruitment went up because of our movie.” Pegg adds, “Hopefully, we’ve done even more for cops with Hot Fuzz than we did for zombies with Shaun of the Dead, and given audiences a two-hour romp.” Park notes, “One audience member said, ‘It’s like a fantastic U.S. action movie and a very funny English comedy had a great baby together!’ Well, I suppose that’s the response we were hoping for.” Frost reports, “After I watched the movie for the first time, I spent about half an hour on the phone babbling about our high-octane cop-athon!” 
 

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