Nutty Buddies
'Hot Fuzz' is another hilarious genre parody from the 'Shaun of the Dead' crew
By Andy Klein
If there were people who worried that Shaun of the Dead was a fluke, Hot Fuzz should put their minds to rest. The new film from writer/director Edgar Wright, writer/star Simon Pegg, and star Nick Frost is every bit as funny. Once again, they're taking on a genre so exhausted that even its parodies constitute an exhausted genre ... and somehow finding a way to make it fresh.
This time around, it's the buddy-cop film, where two mismatched partners will somehow transcend their differences and work together and ... well, you can finish the sentence. Pegg plays Nick Angel, a London cop so dedicated and effective that he's not only the scourge of the crime world. He's also the scourge of the police department: That is, he's so good he makes everyone else look like slackers.
A team of bureaucrats (Bill Nighy, Martin Freeman, Steve Coogan, in memorable cameos) makes sure that he's shipped to another venue, far far away - Sandford, a supposedly idyllic little village in the middle of nowhere. (The Kinks' Village Green Preservation Society album figures heavily in the soundtrack.) Most of the inhabitants are dotty Brit eccentrics, whose values enable them to view their town as nearly perfect. They seem to embody the attitude that Thomas de Quincey once expressed ironically: "If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination."
For such a quaint locale, there's something creepy, almost sinister, about Sandford: The hotel is straight out of The Shining; just as in last week's Red Road, there are official video cameras snooping in everybody's business; and local magnate Simon Skinner (Timothy Dalton) has an evil manner. On the other hand, maybe that's just the way Nick, always looking for a big case to sink his teeth into, is imagining things.
Nick is so rigid about enforcing the law that he manages to alienate half the town before he's even started work. As jovial police chief Frank Butterman (Jim Broadbent) explains, there's no major crime in Sandford; the town's greatest crisis is what to do about the incredibly irritating "living statue" performer. Nick finds himself teamed up with Butterman's dim, rotund son, Danny (Nick Frost). (One of the other cops dubs them "Crockett and Tubby.") Danny - who says things like "You can't be Judge Judy and executioner!" - knows a whole lot more about police movies than police reality, which eventually turns out to be more than a little useful.
For a town with no major crime, however, Sandford sure has a lot of mysterious deaths. "No, no, they're all accidents," Chief Butterman proclaims, as one townsperson after another meets a bloody end.
As in Shaun of the Dead, much of the humor here stems from the juxtaposition of the utterly mundane with the horrifically bizarre and violent. There are American films that operate in a similar fashion, but still there's something distinctly British in Wright's execution. It's as though such postwar Ealing comedies as Kind Hearts and Coronets and The Lavender Hill Mob have been reincarnated in the new millennium in flashier form.
Also as in Shaun, Wright uses Fincher-like smash pans and zooms, as well as sound effects cranked up to 11. Sometimes it seems excessive, though, given the parodic nature of the exercise, the excessiveness makes sense, and buffs can have fun spotting all the references. (It can still get a little annoying.) And, as is so often the case with contemporary action films, the final fight sequences arguably overstay their welcome, pushing the running time to slightly more than two hours.
Wright has assembled a wonderful cast, including - in addition to those already mentioned - such British stalwarts as Billie Whitelaw, Stuart Wilson, Paddy Considine, an unrecognizable Edward Woodward (whose presence brings notice to some basic plot similarities to the original Wicker Man), Kenneth Cranham, and David Bradley. Allegedly, Nick's ex-girlfriend - who only shows up in one early scene, wearing a mask - is Cate Blanchett, but who can tell?
Wright also contributed a clever, one-joke fake trailer to what we will henceforth refer to as "the ill-fated Grindhouse," whose poor box-office results caught me - and, more importantly, its distributor, the
Weinstein Company - by surprise. The polls at Boxofficemojo.com show it scoring slightly higher than eight out of the nine films that outgrossed it this past weekend (300 being the exception). Word of mouth and extraordinary press coverage seem to have been trumped by the film's three-hour-plus running time and sometimes confusing ads.
On some level, Harvey Weinstein should be given credit for going against his better judgment and acceding to Quentin Tarantino and Robert
Rodriguez's desire to see their two mostly unrelated features go out as a single film. In a world where studios' overriding of filmmakers leads to more mischief than good, it might seem churlish to criticize a studio boss who trusts his directors, particularly those with whom he's had a long and profitable relationship.
But I was stunned to realize just how poorly Weinstein releases have done, since Harvey and brother Bob split from Disney/Miramax a few years ago. Only Scary Movie 4 and the inexpensive Hoodwinked can be called successes; the classier, Oscar-bait titles - akin to those Miramax used to crank out every year - have yielded terrible box office and only moderate reviews.
In the late '80s and throughout the '90s, Miramax was the biggest single commercial force behind the indie boom. The company's specialty was figuring out how to take arthouse movies and promote them to mainstream success. From sex, lies, and videotape to The Piano to the huge commercial breakthrough of Pulp Fiction, the Weinsteins were instrumental in expanding the audience for indies. It was Miramax that the major studios were aiming for when they bought or set up their own competing specialty divisions.
The company's sins are well known, particularly (among film buffs) its habit of buying up more titles than it could release and then letting them languish on the shelves. Likewise, it bought the video rights to classic libraries, notably the cream of the Shaw Brothers catalog, which is only now coming out on DVD. Among fans of Asian cinema, Miramax came to be regarded as the closest thing to the devil incarnate (or, more accurately, incorporate).
But, to glance down a list of Miramax's releases throughout the '90s is to see more great examples of world cinema than in any two of the competitors' lists put together. There's no pleasure in seeing the Weinstein Company on the ropes.
Published: 04/19/2007
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