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Hot Fuzz is a 2007 British action comedy film written by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright and starring Pegg and Nick Frost. They worked together previously on the 2004 film Shaun of the Dead and the television series Spaced. It was directed by Wright and produced by Nira Park. Wright revealed that he wanted to write and direct a cop film because "there isn't really any tradition of cop films in the UK... We felt that every other country in the world had its own tradition of great cop action films and we had none."
The film debuted on 14 February 2007 in the United Kingdom and 20 April 2007 in the United States.
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Quotations
DS Andy Wainwright: Ooh, murder murder murder. Change the fucking record!
Reverend Phillip Shooter: Fuck off, grass hopper!
Reverend Phillip Shooter: After being shot Jesus Christ!
Sergeant Butterman, little hand says it's time to rock and roll.
Simon Skinner: Freeze, or the ginger-nut gets it.
They're bad boys. They're die hards. They're lethal weapons. They are...
Encyclopedia
Hot Fuzz is a 2007 British action comedy film written by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright and starring Pegg and Nick Frost. They worked together previously on the 2004 film Shaun of the Dead and the television series Spaced. It was directed by Wright and produced by Nira Park. Wright revealed that he wanted to write and direct a cop film because "there isn't really any tradition of cop films in the UK... We felt that every other country in the world had its own tradition of great cop action films and we had none."
The film debuted on 14 February 2007 in the United Kingdom and 20 April 2007 in the United States. Hot Fuzz received largely positive reviews, earning a 90% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and 81/100 from Metacritic. The total international box office gross reached $78,761,971 before its DVD premiere. Shortly after the film's release, two different soundtracks were released in the UK and US.
Pegg and Wright have referred to Hot Fuzz as being the second film in their "Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy" with Shaun of the Dead as the first and the future project The World Ends as the third.
Plot
Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg), an extremely dedicated police officer in London's Metropolitan Police Service, performs his duties so well that he makes his colleagues look bad. As a result, his superiors transfer him to the sleepy and seemingly crime-free village of Sandford in rural Gloucestershire.
Once there, he immediately arrests a large group of underage drinkers and a drunk driver, who turns out to be his eventual partner, Danny Butterman (Nick Frost), a well-meaning but ineffective police constable, the son of local police inspector Frank Butterman (Jim Broadbent). A serious action film fan, Danny is in awe of his new big city partner, who just might provide him with his chance to experience the life of gunfights and car chases he longs for. Angel struggles to adjust to the slow, uneventful pace of the village. Despite clearing up several otherwise unnoticed crimes in short order, including confiscating a very large stockpile of military equipment, including a sea mine and a number of unlicensed guns, Angel soon finds his most pressing concern to be an escaped swan. His serious manner and strict attention to the letter of the law also makes him the focus of dislike by some of his co-workers. However, Angel and Danny eventually bond over drinks at the local pub and action films.
Soon after Angel's arrival, a series of murders disguised as accidents rock the village, all committed by a figure in a black hood and cloak. Increasingly convinced that Sandford is not what it seems and that the victims of the 'accidents' were murdered, Angel begins to clash with his colleagues. He refuses to drop the investigation and in front of several police officers announces his arrest of Simon Skinner (Timothy Dalton), the charming but sinister manager of the local Somerfield supermarket, of murdering the victims due to their involvement in a lucrative property deal. Skinner smoothly and confidently provides plausibly innocent explanations for all of Angel's charges and goes free, the whole incident further damaging Angel's credibility with his colleagues.
After being ambushed in his hotel room by the cloaked murderer, whom he knocks unconscious and reveals to be Michael Armstrong (Rory McCann), the enormous dim-witted trolley boy of the Somerfield acting on Skinner's orders, Angel is led to a nearby castle where he discovers the truth; Inspector Butterman, Skinner and the Neighbourhood Watch Alliance (NWA), intent on keeping Sandford's title of "Village of the Year", have been murdering anyone who might damage the village's quaint and charming image. The fact that all of the murders that occurred after Angel arrived could be tied together in a property scheme is actually a coincidence, each victim having in fact been murdered for more trivial reasons. Inspector Butterman reveals that his wife committed suicide after the village lost the title many years ago, motivating him to use extreme methods. Angel discovers the bodies of various "problem" people whom the NWA disposed of before and since his arrival, before being cornered and 'stabbed' by Danny, apparently a member of the NWA.
Having tricked the NWA into believing that Angel is dead, Danny instead drives him to the village limits and releases him, insisting that he knew nothing about their true activities. Danny urges Angel to go back to London, reasoning that no one would believe the truth about Sandford. However, while at a motorway service station, Angel sees the action films he and Danny watched on a nearby DVD rack and is inspired to stop the NWA. He drives back to town and arms himself with the guns he confiscated earlier. After Angel meets with Danny in the village, the two begin to dispatch the members of the NWA in an increasingly destructive and frantic series of gun fights. Confronted by their colleagues, who are quickly persuaded of the truth, Angel and Danny take the battle to the supermarket. Skinner and Inspector Butterman flee, and are pursued by Angel and Danny to a nearby miniature park. There both Skinner and Inspector Butterman are apprehended.
Angel's former superiors arrive from London begging him to return, as their crime rate has risen heavily, but Angel chooses to remain in Sandford. Back at the police station, the officers are ambushed by Tom Weaver (Edward Woodward), the last remaining member of the NWA. He attempts to shoot Angel but Danny jumps in the way and takes the bullets himself. In the resulting chaos, the confiscated sea mine is triggered and the station is destroyed.
One year later, Angel lays flowers on a grave marked 'Butterman'; it is revealed that Danny has survived and the grave is his mother's. Angel has been promoted to Inspector as the new head of the Sandford Police Service and Danny to Sergeant, and they go back on the beat together in Sandford.
Cast
Sandford Police Service
Neighbourhood Watch Alliance
Metropolitan Police Service
London residents
- Peter Jackson as Father Christmas (uncredited)
- Joe Cornish as Bob
- Chris Waitt as Dave
- Garth Jennings as Crack Addict (uncredited)
Sandford residents
While writing the script, Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg intended to include Nick Frost as the partner for Pegg's character. Frost revealed that he would only do the film if he could name his character, and he chose "Danny Butterman". Cast requirements included fifty people for speaking and non-speaking parts, and there were several casting calls for citizens of Wells to fill the roles, as the city was where the majority of the filming took place.
Cameos
British singer and actor Joseph McManners played a cameo role as a tearaway schoolboy, however his background story and an entire sub-plot surrounding his character were cut from the final version and can only be found within the DVD bonus features. Stephen Merchant also makes an appearance. Director Edgar Wright revealed in an interview that Cate Blanchett was given her cameo role as a result of her being a fan of Shaun of the Dead. Jim Broadbent similarly revealed his interest in Shaun and requested a role while meeting with Simon Pegg at a BAFTA awards ceremony. Wright met with director Peter Jackson while he was filming King Kong, and Jackson suggested that he would be willing to do a cameo in the film. Edgar had Jackson wear a fake beard and pads to portray Father Christmas who stabs Angel in the opening montage. In the same opening montage, Garth Jennings can be seen as a crack dealer, with the audio commentary stating Garth and Edgar Wright had an agreement to have cameo appearances in each other's films. Paul Freeman, best known for playing Rene Belloq in Raiders of the Lost Ark, appears as Reverend Shooter of the NWA. Veteran BAFTA Award-winning actress Billie Whitelaw, best known for playing Mrs. Baylock in The Omen and appearing in Twisted Nerve and Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy, portrays as Joyce Cooper, another member of the NWA. Kenneth Cranham, best known for portraying the Channard Cenobite (formerly Dr. Philip Channard) in Hellbound: Hellraiser II, appears as James Reaper, who is also a member of the NWA.
Production
Script and locations
Director Edgar Wright and star Simon Pegg spent eighteen months writing the script. The first draft took eight months to develop, and after watching 138 cop-related films for dialogue and plot ideas and conducting over fifty interviews with police officers for research, the script was completed after another nine months. The title was based on the various two-word titles of action films in the 1980s and 90s. In one interview Wright declared that he "wanted to make a title that really had very little meaning...like Lethal Weapon and Point Break and Executive Decision." In the same interview, Pegg joked that when the many action films' titles were chosen that "...all those titles seem to be generated from two hats filled with adjectives and nouns and you just, ‘Okay, that'll do.’"
In the 30 August, 2007 edition of film critic Roger Ebert's "Answer Man" column, John Weckmueller of Milwaukee wrote that he had "just listened to the commentary on the new DVD of Edgar Wright's Hot Fuzz. The filmmakers mention that while writing the screenplay they were reading your Little Movie Glossary book, which they referred to as 'essential reading'".)
During the latter half of 2005, Working Title approached several towns in South West England looking for an appropriate filming location. Simon Pegg commented "We're both from the West Country so it just seemed like it was the perfect and logical thing to drag those kind of ideas and those genres and those clichés back to our beginnings to where we grew up, so you could see high-octane balls-to-the-wall action in Frome". Stow-on-the-Wold was considered amongst others, but after being turned away, the company settled upon Wells, Edgar Wright's hometown. Wright has commented "and Wells is very picturesque...I love it but I also want to trash it". The Wells Cathedral was digitally painted out of every shot of the village, as Wright wanted the Church of St. Cuthbert to be the centre building for the fictional town of Sandford; however, the Bishop's Palace is identifiable in some shots. Filming also took place at the Hendon Police College, including the driving school skid pan and athletic track.
Homage
Wright has said that Hot Fuzz takes elements from his final amateur film, Dead Right, which he described as both "Lethal Weapon set in Somerset" and "a Dirty Harry film in Somerset". He uses some of the same locations in both films including the Somerfield supermarket, where he used to work as a shelf-stacker.
Various scenes in Hot Fuzz feature a variety of action film DVDs such as Supercop, and scenes from Point Break and Bad Boys II. Wright revealed that he had to get permission from every actor in each video clip to use the clips and for the use of the DVD covers had to pay for the rights from the respective studios. The film parodies clichés used in other action movies. On the topic of perceived gun fetishes in these movies, Pegg has said "Men can't do that thing, which is the greatest achievement of humankind, which is to make another human, so we make metal versions of our own penises and fire more bits of metal out of the end into peoples heads...It's our turn to grab the gun by the hilt and fire it into your face". Despite this, Pegg maintains that the film is not a spoof in that, "They lack the sneer that a lot of parodies have that look down on their source material. Because we're looking up to it." The film also includes various references to The Wicker Man, in which Edward Woodward, here playing a major villain, had played a policeman tough on law and order. In the scene in the Somerfield store, when Angel is confronting a chav for shoplifting, a DVD copy of Shaun of the Dead can be seen for a few seconds, Although the title is 'Zombies Party' and where Simon's head normally is on the cover, there is a price sticker. It is the Spanish and Portuguese title for the film.
Effects
Ten artists were used to develop the visual effects for the film. To illustrate the destruction of the mansion as a result of the gas explosion, gas mortars were placed in front of the building to create large-scale fireballs. The wave of fire engulfs the camera, and to achieve that effect, gas mortars were used again but were fired upwards into a black ceiling piece that sloped up towards the camera. When the sequence was shot at a high speed the flames appeared to surge across the ground. For one of the final scenes of the film, the Sandford police station is destroyed by an explosion. Part of the explosion was created by using a set model that showed its windows being blown out, while the building remained intact. The actual destruction of the building was depicted by exploding a miniature model of the station.
Similar to the work in Shaun of the Dead, blood and gore was prevalent throughout the film and visual effects supervisor Richard Briscoe revealed the rationale for using the large amounts of blood: "In many ways, the more extreme you make it, the more people know it is stylised and enjoy the humour inherent in how ridiculous it is. It's rather like the (eventually) limbless Black Knight in Monty Python's Holy Grail." The most time-consuming sequence involving gore was for when the reporter's head is crushed by a section of a cathedral. A dummy was used against a green screen and the head was detonated at the point when the object was about to impact the body. Over seventy gunfight shots were digitally augmented throughout the film and Briscoe also stated, "The town square shootout, for example, is full of extra little hits scattered throughout, so that it feels like our hero characters really do have it all going off, all around them. It was a great demonstration of [how] seemingly very trivial enhancements can make a difference when combined across a sequence."
Preparation and filming
To prepare for their roles in the film, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost had to follow certain requirements. Pegg's contract stated that he had to adopt a strict diet and use three personal trainers to prepare him for the physically demanding scenes in the film. Frost was asked by Wright and Pegg to watch around twenty action films to warm him up for his role as a police officer, but he decided to only watch Bad Boys II.
Filming commenced on 19 March 2006 and lasted for eleven weeks. After editing, Wright ended up cutting half an hour of footage from the film.
Promotion
The first two teaser trailers were released on 16 October 2006. Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost maintained several video blogs which were released at various times throughout the production of the film. Wright and Frost held a panel at the 2006 Comic-Con convention in San Diego, California to promote Hot Fuzz, which included preliminary footage and a question and answer session. The two returned to the convention again in 2007 to promote the U.S. DVD release. Advanced screenings of the film took place on 14 February 2007 in the UK and the world premiere was on 16 February 2007. The premiere included escorts from motorcycle police officers and the use of blue carpet instead of the traditional red carpet.
Reception
The film received many positive reviews, and was rated as highly as Shaun of the Dead. It has a 90% "Certified Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes and has a Metacritic score of 81 out of 100, which indicates "universal acclaim". Olly Richards of Empire said of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost: "After almost a decade together they’re clearly so comfortable in each other’s presence that they feel no need to fight for the punchline, making them terrific company for two hours". Johnny Vaughan of The Sun already called it the "most arresting Brit-com of 2007". Phillip French of The Observer, who did not care for Shaun of the Dead, warmed to the comedy team in this film. The film also received positive reviews stateside. Derek Elley of Variety praised Broadbent and Dalton, "[who] are especially good as Angel's hail-fellow-well-met superior and oily No. 1 suspect". As an homage to the genre, the film was well received by screenwriter Shane Black.
However, The Daily Mirror only gave Hot Fuzz 2/5, stating that "many of the jokes miss their target" as the film becomes more action-based. Daily Mail also shared The Mirrors view, saying that "It's the lack of any serious intent that means too much of it is desperately unamusing, and unamusingly desperate". Anthony Quinn of The Independent said "The same impish spirit [as Spaced] is uncorked here, but it has been fatally indulged".
The film generated £7.1 million in its first weekend of release in the UK on 14 February 2007. In the 20 April US opening weekend, the film grossed $5.8 million from only 825 theatres, making it the highest per-theatre average of any film in the top ten that week. Its opening weekend take beat the $3.3 million opening weekend gross of Pegg and Wright's previous film, Shaun of the Dead. In its second weekend of release, Rogue Pictures expanded the film's theater count from 825 to 1,272 and it grossed $4.9 million, representing a 17% dip in the gross. As of 1 November 2007, Hot Fuzz has grossed $79,791,231 worldwide. In nine weeks, the film earned nearly twice what Shaun of the Dead made in the US, and more than three times its gross in other countries.
DVD release
The DVD was released on 11 June 2007 in the UK and 8 June 2007 in Ireland. Over one million DVDs were sold in the UK in the first four weeks of its release. Disc one of the two-disc set contains the feature film with four commentaries, outtakes, trailers, and TV spots, 'The Man Who Would Be Fuzz', 'Hot Funk' (a brief censored version of the film), Fuzz-o-meter, storyboards, and 'Flick Book: The Other Side'. The second disc contains 22 deleted scenes with optional commentary, a making of documentary, thirteen video blogs, featurettes, plot holes and comparisons, special effects feature, galleries, and some hidden easter eggs. The DVD also features Wright's last amateur film, Dead Right, which he described as "Hot Fuzz without the budget". A making of Dead Right is also included on the second disc. Due to the above release date, the film arrived on region 2 DVD earlier than the theatrical release date in Germany on 14 June 2007. In the commentary with director Edgar Wright and fellow filmmaker Quentin Tarantino they discuss nearly 200 films.
The US DVD and HD DVD release of Hot Fuzz came out on 31 July 2007. According to the official site, the HD DVD edition has more special features than the standard DVD release. The three-disc Collector's Edition was released on 27 November 2007.
Somerfield, whose Wells store was used for the supermarket shootout, promoted the release by offering a free copy of the DVD to its customers when they spent £20 in any of their stores for a limited period.
Soundtrack
The soundtrack album, Hot Fuzz: Music from the Motion Picture, was released on 19 February 2007 in the United Kingdom, and on 17 April 2007 in the United States and Canada. The UK release contains 22 tracks, and the North American release has 14. Although featured in the film as a Broadway version sung in the theatre scene, "Lovefool" by The Cardigans does not feature on the soundtrack in this version, or in its original form either.
The film's score is by British composer David Arnold, who has scored the James Bond film series since 1997. The soundtrack album's "Hot Fuzz Suite" is a compilation of excerpts from Arnold's score.
Other music from the film is a mix of 1960s and 1970s British rock (The Kinks, T.Rex, The Move, The Sweet, The Troggs, Arthur Brown, Cozy Powell), New Wave (Adam Ant, XTC) and UK and American indie (The Fratellis, Eels). The soundtrack album features dialogue extracts by Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and other cast members, mostly embedded in the music tracks.
At times the music is diegetic in nature. For example when Timothy Dalton's character Skinner drives by the fatal collision scene of Blower and Draper (who had appeared on stage the previous evening as Romeo and Juliet), the Dire Straits song "Romeo and Juliet" is heard on Skinner's radio. In another scene, involving the burning of George Merchant, Skinner drives by with his radio playing "Fire" by Arthur Brown.
Dire Straits' "Romeo and Juliet" does not appear on the soundtrack album, but in his DVD commentary, director Edgar Wright notes the irony of having to pay the band to use the song after he had poked fun at them in his previous film, Shaun of the Dead.
The song selection also includes some police-themed titles, including Supergrass' "Caught by the Fuzz" as well as "Here Come the Fuzz", which was especially composed for the film by Jon Spencer's Blues Explosion.
American film director Robert Rodriguez contributed to the film's score, and is acknowledged in the UK album's liner notes. The liner notes also credit Nick Angel (the person whom the character is named after) and director Edgar Wright as executive producers, while British mashup and breakbeat DJ Osymyso is credited as soundtrack producer. Osymyso worked with Pegg and Wright on their previous film, Shaun of the Dead.
External links
Filmmaker Magazine on ThinkTalk.com
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