The Fake Life - Love movies? We do too!

Friday, February 16, 2007

Review: Hot Fuzz

Hot Fuzz is the new film from the makers of Shaun of the Dead. This time out Simon Pegg plays a very serious big-city cop assigned to a sleepy English village where nothing ever happens. Hot Fuzz isn't as good as Shaun of the Dead. Bugger.

Now, every other movie geek website has raved over it, and most of the mainstream press have followed suit. There are half a dozen gags a minute, the plot, when it kicks in, actually works, there's not a dull or empty corner in the film and the performances are spot on and extremely lovable. All the things you could ask from the follow up to Shaun are there, so there's no question of this being a failure. The problem comes from Hot Fuzz being a much more ambitious film and that it, for all the good will in the world, doesn't achieve those higher goals.

You see: The plot sees the big city attitudes being shoved against a country village attitudes for its drama and its comedy. These are the poles of the conflict, between which the characters will move. In Shaun you had Pegg's slacker character slowly starting to take responsibility for his life and grow up, with a zombie invasion just happening to be the catalyst for change. The movement is clear and the resolution satisfying. The zombies fit perfectly into suburban London.

But in Hot Fuzz we also have Nick Frost's Constable Butterman who is obsessed with American buddy cop actioners like Point Break and Bad Boys 2 and idolises Pegg's character because he thinks his life is really like those movies. So now we have a distinction between American and English depictions of the law too. Then bodies start turning up, the victims of a horror-movie style boogeyman wearing a Grim Reaper style cloak, and the film turns into a slasher-style horror movie set in the tea-and-biscuits English countryside. Finally it all goes action movie as Pegg's character shoves on the sunglasses and loads up on guns to take out the bad guy.

How does becoming an American movie cliche resolve the big city vs village issue? It doesn't. What does playing with the horror genre have to do with Pegg's character development? Not much, to be honest. The ease with which Shaun married the genre-play with its character arcs is replaced with a slightly frantic mash-up.

There's enough stuff here for at least two films and the rushing between action movie, buddy cop movie, horror movie, whudunnit and an episode of Last of the Summer Wine, only with jokes, proves that maybe they should have made two or more films with the material.

The surprisingly large police force in the village is mostly comprised of one note characters. It's usually a good note, but the attempts to keep them all in play results in them popping up, giving their one joke, then popping off again. It gets repetitive and it doesn't make us give a shit about them when they have to make an important decision in the third act. Equally, giving time to these side characters gives us less time with the important ones.

Now, you know those two shots in Shaun when Pegg groggily walks out of his house to the corner shop to pick up a Coke and a Cornetto and then back again? Those shots give us a sense of place and of the characters behaving naturally within it. It settles the audience in and lets them feel that they know where they are, which in turn gives the moment when things start to change for the worse more impact. There is nothing like this in Hot Fuzz. So busy are the film-makers about packing things in that we have no time to settle in to the village - relying on that machine-gun style editing they used in Shaun (when he brushed his teeth and went to the loo) to move us along. You need the quiet bits to help the audience feel the noisy bits, especially as the film is supposed to be dealing with the difference between the quiet of village life and the noise of the city.

Another problem is that Pegg's character - the obsessed, by the rules cop - isn't actually funny. He's a serious character - a straight-man - yet he's not really the butt of too many jokes once they get to the village as the time is spent mocking the yokeley locals. His over-seriousness is his main character flaw, it is that which he must overcome and, as such, is a comedy vacuum for the first half of the film.

Equally there's no relatable, or 'normal' character here, with everyone being either being daft villager or obsessed cop. Such a character may not be essential for comedy but it bloody well helps, and Shaun had a great one. Good for Pegg to play a different character but, I'm afraid, bad for the movie.

Because when he does lighten up in the second half the film opens up. He's never less than likable when he's all serious, but when he gets drunk he's absolutely lovable.

And that seems like a good description of the movie. The more ambitious ideas in this film do not hold together, but when it just resorts to having fun, its hilarious. When they're diving through the air with two pistols a la John Woo or drop-kicking old ladies the film couldn't be more enjoyable. Equally, when they are just doing straight slasher scenes, the obvious delight they took in setting up the kills comes through clear as day. Maybe it doesn't all hook up thematically, but when the film-makers say 'fuck it, shoot-out!' it is impossible to resist the glee with which they throw themselves into it. For all its ambitions to be a real character piece or a deconstruction of genre (and for all my bitching about quoting movies), Hot Fuzz is at its best when doing cop movie cliches, only a bit silly.

I could nitpick further, or give spoiler filled descriptions of the bits I actually liked, but I shall leave it there. It is does not disgrace Shaun of the Dead, but it does not match it, despite all those involved having noticeably improved their craft. It is scuppered by an over-enthusiastic but slightly confused desire to shove a few too many of their favourite things on screen at the same time. It's hardly the worst cinematic crime, though and I should make this clear - this film is worth seeing just for one of the truly awesome, and awesomely bloody, kills. Everything else is gravy.

7 out of 10