When it comes to Edgar Wright, it isn’t difficult to find a film of his that greatly appeals to you. For some people, all of them do, but I believe that every person has a special attachment to one of his films over the rest. For myself, Hot Fuzz is the answer. As I’ve stated before on various social platforms, when I first got around to Hot Fuzz I was lukewarm on it. It was pretty funny, but it wasn’t gut busting. I liked the story, but I wasn’t enamored. I understood why he approached the finale the way he did, but it annoyed me more than it wowed me. Now, with a handful of rewatches under my belt and plenty of memorable laughs to go along with it, Hot Fuzz is one of my favorite movies of all-time. It isn’t because it’s a hilarious movie, it’s because it has so much subtext interwoven with it’s rapid-fire jokes and bloodshed. There is a blunt and obvious satirical lens aimed at this story as it tries to deconstruct the mythology of an American cop movie, and most people would agree that it does so very well. When we notice that this was a movie released in 2007, it’s kind of incredible how it operated with tremendous foresight. Almost like a premonition of sorts. Just nine years later we’d see political gatherings mirror story developments to a bone-chilling degree, more social awareness to abuses of power in positions of law enforcement, and corporations getting far more flack than they may have gotten before. For Edgar Wright you have to imagine that the reason he worked with incredible foresight is because he was socially conscious of America’s cyclical obsession with the cop action film, and how it woefully misrepresented the truth of law enforcement in America. Hollywood has produced, championed, and positioned police officers as action heroes in the same vein as Western icons without any sense of social awareness or intent to interrogate the idea of the role they actually play in the real world. Which is why I firmly believe this is one of the only films centered around police officers that proposes the idea that their positions of power have been abused for too long, and America acting like it doesn’t exist has transcended all forms of parody.
When Nicholas arrives at Sandford he is greeted by the apartment clerk with, “Fascist”. This causes him to jerk upright until she lets him know it solves one of the crossword puzzles. It’s a funny joke, but it sets an immediate, unsettled tone, and foreshadows future revelations about Sandford. With Wright’s snappy and quick-lipped dialogue, a first viewing and laugh out loud moments may cause you to miss some of the moments like this that lend itself to the overarching themes and subtext at work. This happens again in the very next sequence. After Nicholas apprehends a group of underage drinkers at one of the only bars in town, the clerk at the police station can be seen reading Iain Banks’ “Complicity”. Iain Banks is a Scottish author and released “Complicity” in 1993 as well as a slew of other crime novels. In “Complicity”, the main character writes an editorial about named capitalists and right-wing public figures. Banks writes this story as one that uses right-wing public figures as better figures of hate than conventional ones. The novel has themes of growing into pacifism and various plot points that inhabit most other politically driven crime novels. This isn’t to say that Wright uses Hot Fuzz as a movie about growing into pacifism as a police officer (although the Japanese Peace Lilly could symbolize this), but there are continuous hints towards Nicholas bucking typical movie related tropes. As well as interrogating the act of being complicit with power.
When we meet Nicholas we can tell that he is someone that cares about his job, excels at it, and is uninterested in fitting the mold of how officers are typically perceived. This is shown through his budding friendship with Danny as he is someone who notes classic, American action films that define the genre and elevate the dramatics of being a police officer. Danny asks him if he participates in, “proper action and shit”, and asks him about very specific events as an officer that he perceives as cool because the movies make it cool. There is an exchange in a pub where Nicholas recounts being stabbed in the hand and Danny wide-eyed and ecstatic asks him if it was awesome, and Nicholas says it was the most painful experience of his life. This knocks Danny down a peg, but there are constant moments like this scattered throughout the film. Nicholas hates the term “police force” because it insinuates that officers of the law are meant to aggressively enforce the law. He doesn’t glorify his firearm as a tool meant to inflict fear, avoids drinking alcohol, and is determined to keep everyone accountable even if they are also police officers. Nicholas Angel is the complete opposite of nearly every American cop hero that has plagued movies for decades.
It is extremely clever how Wright manages to weave these threads of defying character conventions, while simultaneously creating a snarky replica of the American cop film. From Dirty Harry, to Point Break and Bad Boys II, the American cop action film has foregone any self-awareness to the reality of a police officer. That’s not to say we shouldn’t watch these movies or enjoy them, I, in fact, like all of the examples, including many others. What Hot Fuzz is able to do is pay an ode to those films by making fun of how absurd it is that we’ve essentially lionized the lives of police officers. America has glorified the existence of enforcing the law over practicing the law, and we now see that outside the realm of major motion pictures. All it takes is a quick Facebook scroll or comments section on a news article to figure out how so many people have become politically radicalized around the idolization of police officers.
Going back to Nicholas’ first exchange in Sandford, the term “Fascist”, has a double meaning within the context of the film. Not only does it foreshadow a radical cult of locals who are trying to maintain order for “the greater good”, but the deputy officer is the leader of that cult, and they are reinforced by Simon Skinner. The owner of a local grocery store and the mayor of Sandford. Outside the context of this movie, Nicholas’ betrayal of tendencies in cop movies is a betrayal of fascist behavior. His dialogue regarding the representation of the badge as a symbol of protection over power is something that has sat with me for a while. Too often do we see in movies (and even perpetuated in real life), are officers who view the shield as a way to relish in power over others, and forcefully enforce rather than protect through proper practice. This gives Hot Fuzz that reflection of the past, as well as a look ahead towards something we never thought would be culturally overwhelming at the time. If we look back as recently as 2020 and the whirlwind of emotions it put everybody through, the protests against police violence have always been there, we finally have the technology to capture it, share it, and comment on it. When we see movies trying to capture the moment, it can feel gross seeing a studio cash in on a hot topic, but what separates those from movies like Hot Fuzz or Do The Right Thing, is that there is an intent to inform. As funny and violent as Hot Fuzz is, the point is that it’s gross that Hollywood has idolized police violence when real people are subject to being eradicated by the shield that is supposed to, “protect and serve”. It takes a special talent for a director or writer to simultaneously make a movie that beats you over the head with an idea, while maintaining a firm sense of subtlety that reaches beyond the room you’re watching the movie in. Hot Fuzz is one of those movies, and that’s because Edgar Wright understands the significance of how vital art is, the capabilities of it, and how it can inform even when it seems like it isn’t. All movies are overly dramatized expressions of an idea, topic, or emotion, but when it is constantly turning gears to scream in your face that American police officers are crossing lines, and then seeing reality reflect that, it isn’t a coincidence.
As we rolled through 2020, the theme of the year has to be “Accountability”. Whether it’s POTUS45, or the lady down the street with a bad haircut and a personalized license plate being prejudiced, there is a clear lack of accountability when we look at America and it’s offerings. Consequently, the lack of accountability stems from being complicit. Complicit with the idea that something needs to happen whether it’s good or bad because it doesn’t affect their life, but affects someone else’s. By not holding someone accountable for making a bad decision we’ve given them leeway to do whatever they please because we’ve failed to give them a consequence. In a world without consequence, no matter what societal position we hold, we lose the will to understand why we face specific tribulations. America is so far gone, that a near majority of its population has mistaken, “consequence”, for “eliminating freedoms”. In a country hellbent on making sure their personality is built around blue lines, bronze badges, and lifted trucks, the only way to relish in freedom is to embrace consequence. Consequence for action, hurtful remarks, prejudiced, and/or racial slurs, is imperative. The freedom to live as you are shouldn’t come at the cost of someone else’s self righteousness, selfishness, or moral misunderstandings, and we can absolutely frame the idolization of police officers as a bullet point in perpetuating them as heroes. Police officers, for all of the terrors they may face that I never will, are not Spider-Man, Batman, Perseus, or Hercules. They’re human. Humans with psychology that can break, inherently flawed, and in a system that uses the badge as a symbol for pacification rather than unification. They’ve built an “us versus them” mentality to mask their abuses of power through omission and complicity with their peers’ actions. The movies are just that, the movies, but at the heart of every great movie, there is a perspective founded on emotion, that stems from a truth in their reality.
In Hot Fuzz that truth is built on institutionalized beliefs that inflict harm to its immediate surroundings that could reveal the truth of what “the greater good” actually is. “The greater good” being the will to act through its police force to maintain a reality that is perceived to be acceptable by societal norms and standards. Then eliminating those who rightly, justly, challenge it. To me, that registers Hot Fuzz as one of the greatest American movies ever made. One that wasn’t even filmed on American soil. This is a movie fueled by the passion for it’s inspirations, and electrified by it’s frustrations with the social systems put in place to create a false reality to mask the truths of it’s foundation. That’s America in a bullet casing.