Hot fuzz - case study

1. Hot Fuzz – Case Study
Working Titles released ‘Hot Fuzz’ in 2007 with a
total worldwide theatre gross of $80,573,774. The
film was directed by Edgar Wright, who is
notorious for his action comedies. The film is also
part of a trilogy of stories known as “The Cornetto
Trilogy” which contains another two films, ‘Shaun
of the Dead’ and ‘The World’s End’, both directed
by Edger Wright. Personally I love the way the films
make light of what usually be a global crisis, such
as zombie invasions, murderous villages and alien
robots.
The narrative of the film is that the main protagonist, PC Nicholas Angle, a
hard working action man is sent from the busy streets of London to the quiet
village of Sandford known for the lowest crime rate in the country. Then
“accidents” begin to happen and many people end up dead which leaves
Nicholas to believe their all connected. This leaves him on a wild goose chase
to find the murderer(s) with his partner Danny Butterman. This reveals a cult
using many people of high power in the village of killing people to keep the
towns crime perception down.
The film is set in a town called Sandford portrayed at a quiet, boring and
normal place to live, with people of the same description. This is used at first
to show to juxtaposing affect it has to the main protagonist at the start of the
film, but is later revealed that it is used at a form of blanket or camouflage for
the real appearance of the village, a murder cult. The use of the location is also
used for ridicules fight scenes and the characters in them. For example: elderly
woman who you would associate with fragile and loving, wielding fully
automatic machine guns in the quiet rural streets turned battle zones. In
addition by using a small village
many characters can be introduced
and reappear on the fly, which the
film does perfectly to raise
suspicion in who the murder is.

2. The main two characters in the film are Nicholas Angle and Danny Butterman.
These characters completely juxtapose each other. Nicholas is a very
hardworking strategic man who can’t separate his social and work life. This is a
completely different mind set to Danny as he is lazy and doesn’t treat his job
seriously and more of a social gathering every day. By introducing these
characters to each other they immediately clash, shown by the fact Nicholas
arrests Danny near the start of the film. But throughout the film both
characters warm to each other and can be seen influencing each other and
somewhat improving each other’s life. This can be seen when they both get
drunk together and Nicholas explains how he can’t keep his work life separate
from his social life explain how he “doesn’t know how to switch off”, this is
where Danny says he can help and they proceed to watch “bad boys 2”. This
can be seen as the characters movement through the story. The pairing of
these two characters with Nicholas’s quick wittedness and Danny’s stupid pop
culture one liners create amazingly funny scenes.
This film is the very embodiment of what Working Titles action comedy films
are like. Ridicules, funny and full of violence. Due to its partnership with
Universal studies these films often have big budgets and can afford to contain
high amounts of pyrotechnics and prop/location destruction for these action
packed stories. This usually allows for the obscene plots of each film produced
by Edger Wright and his team. This gave birth the ‘The Cornetto Trilogy’ and
can also be seen in films such as ‘Scott Pilgrim vs the World’ and ‘Paul’.
The film had international success and gained $23,637,265 from the US alone.
This is due to the fact that the comedy was understandable even to non-
British audiences and with the appearance of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, who
stared in the popular film before this ‘Shaun of the Dead’, most audiences
knew of the type of film this was going to be before they had even seen it. It
had the Working Titles frame to stick to by only including famous English
locations, like London, and vast green fields with small villages as this is what
American viewers stereotyped Britain as. With Universal
distributing this around the US it gained popularity quick.
With 8/10 stars on IMDB and 91% on rotten tomatoes it
can been seen that ‘Hot Fuzz’ is seen as comedic genius
and gained Edger Wright a high status in the directing
industry. An opinion I can strongly agree on.