Hot Fuzz

It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that Britain is generally a bit of a crap place. I speak as a native. Our weather's crap, our government's crap, our television's crap. It's a good job our cinema's had its fair share of high points - Powell & Pressburger, the Ealing films, Hitchcock, Lindsay Anderson, Tony Richardson, the Scott brothers - otherwise we'd be down to William Shakespeare, football and the royal family to act as standard bearers of our cultural heritage, and frankly that's way too much for one playwright who's been dead 800 years to shoulder on his own.

And even then I worry about British cinema sometimes. Most of our brightest lights were very quick to make the move Stateside. Those who have stayed tend to a small screen, non-cinematic, people-in-housing-estates-yelling-at-each-other-for-two-hours aesthetic. That, or they disappear up their own fundamental orifices in a welter of pretentiousness. Mentioning no names, Peter Greenaway.

While I'm being decidedly unpatriotic and getting all this off my chest, I may as well offend the middle class critics who have long fawned over them as the leading lights of British cinema and say that I'm not all that keen on the work of Ken Loach or Mike Leigh. Loach, when he gets the balance between cinema and politics right, can pull off a thunderingly good movie - 'Hidden Agenda' and 'Land and Freedom' are bob on - but most of the time the balance is way off kilter and he's too focussed on making a polemic to make cinema. Mike Leigh I find downright patronising. I'm working class (grandfather: miner; father: truck driver) and I don't recognise Leigh's characters. They have none of the earthy humour, colloquial loquacity and cameraderie that I've seen first hand. Sight & Sound would never publish me for saying this, but it deserves saying: 'The Full Monty' is a more realistic depiction of working class life than anything by Mike Leigh.

All of which is a 300-word way of saying thank God and all His little angels for Edgar Wright. Two films into his career (and I'm gnashing my teeth to think that he's already defected across the pond for his third feature) and he's made two British films, set in recognisably contemporary British locations, full of British actors playing quintessentially British characters, the situations and satirical elements imbued with a distinctly British strand of dry humour ... and both films have been cinematic, pacy, massively entertaining and funny as fuck.

'Shaun of the Dead' was a knowing send-up of George A Romero's undead saga that I can't imagine any other British filmmaker attempting - let alone pulling off. (Ken Loach's 'The Wind That Shakes the Zombie'? Mike Leigh's 'Happy Go Zombie'? Don't think so!) It also had enough bite that it succeeds as a stand-alone film. With a cast of small screen comedy greats (Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Dylan Moran, Lucy Davies, Martin Freeman) and an authentic big screen legend (Bill Nighy), a script that juggled the laughs and the gore without missing a beat, and some brilliantly true to life moments (fleeing a horde of flesh-munching zombies? where do you go? shopping mall? military base? course not! pub, innit?), 'Shaun of the Dead' was so assured and accomplished that it seemed like Wright had wrought himself a fucker of a hard act to follow.

Then he went and made 'Hot Fuzz'. The talented bugger.

There are those who hold 'Shaun of the Dead' as the better film, but for me 'Hot Fuzz' is pure comedic genius. Wright and co-writer Pegg basically take the mismatched-partners-tough-talk-car-chases-blow-shit-up buddy movie ethos beloved of Hollywood, shake up all the cliches, and restage the whole thing in a sleepy Home Counties market town. The kind of place where everyone knows everyone else. The kind of place that wins "best kept village" awards. The kind of place that has an amateur dramatics society but no cinema.

Not that this bothers half-arsed copper PC Danny Butterman (Frost). He prefers the pub to the theatre, plus there's his extensive collection of action movies on DVD (his personal faves: 'Point Break' and 'Bad Boys II'). He's delighted when he gets partnered with Nicholas Angel (Pegg), an ambitious Londoner transferred out of the metropolis after the top brass decide that his outstanding arrest record and string of commendations makes everyone else look bad. Danny plagues Nick with endless questions about life in a more action-packed constabulary (for example, "have you ever fired your gun in the air while screaming Aaaaaarrrrgggghhhh?")

Nick finds it hard to share Danny's excitement. His commitment to diligent police work earns reprimands from new boss Inspector Frank Butterman (Jim Broadbent) and the mockery of Special Branch bods DS Andy Wainwright (Paddy Consodine) and DC Andy Cartwright (Rafe Spall). He finds his duties (wielding a speed camera, officiating at a church fete tombola) banal to the point of humiliating. His biggest case is the disappearance of a local swan.

Then the murders start. Full-blooded, hilariously graphic affairs. Wright lets horror movie imagery sit cheek-by-jowl with cop movie iconography (his double homage to 'Scream' is a treat) and the effect is peerless. The short, zippy scenes and full-tilt editing are matched by the thick-and-fast barrage of in-jokes. The aforementioned 'Point Break' and 'Bad Boys II' get their key moments gleefully sent up; a running joke about one of the am-dram members being an extra in 'Straw Dogs' sets up a pub shoot-out/mantrap decapitation that's absolutely priceless; 'Scream' and 'The Omen' nudge up against each other; a 'Shaun of the Dead' DVD makes a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo; the leather-jacketed Special Branch types are pure 'Sweeney'; and there's a dash of Sergio Leone in the build-up to a screamingly funny gun battle that plays out like Sam Peckinpah on laughing gas or John Woo meets 'Last of the Summer Wine'.

For all the broad comedy, the best gags are the least obvious: Nicholas Angel's badge number is 777 (in theology often consider the number of God just as 666 is the number of the beast); the only character who refers to him by his number is Simon Skinner, played by former Bond (ie. 007) Timothy Dalton; the shotguns Nicholas and Danny use in the climactic shoot-out are Winchesters (the name of the pub in 'Shaun of the Dead'); identical twin brothers are differentiated by their choice of reading matter: a contemporary novel by Iain Banks and a sci-fi by Iain M. Banks (Banks is one and the same author, who uses the M. to differentiate the types of fiction he writes; the brothers are played by the same actor); the contemporary Banks novel is 'Complicity' - filmed, not entirely successfully, by Gavin Millar - which concerns a series of murders staged ironically according to the misdeeds of the victims, a concept embraced by the conspirators in 'Hot Fuzz'.

The cast is eclectic: in addition to Dalton and Broadbent, Edward Woodward, Billie Whitelaw and Kenneth Cranham do some of their best work in ages, while Bill Nighy and Martin Freeman return in an effective cameos, alongside Steve Coogan. In fact, there's no-one, even in the smallest roles, who strikes a wrong note. Not only does Wright have an ear for dialogue, an eye for the cinematic, and a sense of humour tuned with radar-like effectiveness to the genuinely funny, but he's also a bloody good actors' director. As I may have mentioned before, talented bugger.

THE FINAL GIRL FILM CLUB: Grindhouse

Do you know how excited I was about ‘Grindhouse’? Imagine the adrenalin levels of a kid on Christmas Day, a fat kid in a sweetshop lockdown and no adults around to tell him not to, a pyromaniac in a fireworks factory, a dipsomaniac left in charge of a distillery, a voyeur given carte blanche to roam around the Playboy Mansion, and a member of the NRA at an arms bazaar. Now combine all those adrenalin levels, throw a few tequila slammers into the mix and shoot the whole thing full of heroin.

That’s how excited I was.

Tim at Antagony & Ecstacy reviewed it under the pullquote ‘The Movie I Was Put on This Earth to See’, and I was almost wetting myself.

And. Then. Something. Happened.

‘Grindhouse’ underperformed at the American box office. I started hearing dispiriting rumours: the film was being split in two for its European release; ‘Death Proof’ would come out first; there was no confirmed UK release date for ‘Planet Terror’. There was a big question mark over whether the spoof trailers would be released theatrically.

I. Was. Not. Happy.


I’ll admit it here and now: I was looking forward more to ‘Planet Terror’ than ‘Death Proof’, having been monstrously underwhelmed by ‘Kill Bill Vol. II’ (another Tarantino opus that got released in two parts, with a six month wait after the blistering first instalment with its iconic “House of Blue Leaves” set-piece).

Sure enough, the handful of lobby posters I’d seen for ‘Grindhouse’ quietly disappeared, to be replaced by ‘Death Proof’ posters. Frequent IMDb visits seemed to confirm that there was still no release date for ‘Planet Terror’. In the meantime, I’d tracked down the spoof trailers online and bookmarked them.

A week before ‘Death Proof’ opened, I got hold of ‘Planet Terror’ on Region 1 DVD, featuring the ‘Machete’ trailer (my personal favourite of the four spoofs). Me and Paula decided to have our own, cobbled together ‘Grindhouse’ experience: we watched ‘Planet Terror’ on DVD in the morning (including ‘Machete’), fired up the computer and watched the ‘Don’t’, ‘Thanksgiving’ and ‘Werewolf Women of the SS’ trailers, then went to the cinema and watched ‘Death Proof’ on the big screen in the afternoon.

It doesn’t quite equate to taking your seat in the cinema, watching two 90-minuters (each complete with ‘missing reel’) back to back, interspersed with the spoof trailers – ie. three and a half hours of moviegoing designed as an affectionate, often ironic but ultimately down and dirty throwback to the grubby joys of the exploitation B-movie double bill.

The point of those 70s double-bills was that you saw them in a cinema. Usually a dingy fleapit where the seats were dimpled with cigarette burns, smoke was still hanging in the air courtesy of the audience at the earlier screening, your shoes adhered to the floor thanks to a combination of melted ice cream, popcorn and spilled Ki-ora, and the films were interrupted at least a couple of times during the screening due to technical problems with the projector.

In order to recreate the experience, ‘Planet Terror’ and ‘Death Proof’ – the former more authentically – are scratched and distressed and jump about a lot, simulating hamfisted splicing, and in the case of ‘Planet Terror’ the film seems to bubble up and burn into white nothingness.

Seen on DVD, you think “hmmm, that’s quite a convincing effect”. Seen on a computer, the spoof trailers are quite obviously that: spoofs. You find yourself picking hairs. Both ‘Thanksgiving’ and ‘Werewolf Women of the SS’, as sleazily inspired as they are, are billed as “a film by Eli Roth” and “a film by Rob Zombie” respectively, the latter trumpeting a big star name (Nicolas Cage) – but no zero-budgeted exploitation flick would be thus advertised. Edgar Wright’s ‘Don’t’ hits the mark as acutely as ‘Machete’, though, delivering a minute’s worth of stalk ‘n’ slash highlights while the voiceover drones monotonously “Don’t … don’t … don’t … don’t.”

Still, all of these component parts were meant to be taken together, as a three and a half hour whole … and were meant to be seen at the cinema. Instead, we got expanded cuts of ‘Planet Terror’ and ‘Death Proof’, the former now clocking in 1 hour 45 minutes, and Tarantino’s opus pushing the two hour mark, again pushing the films another step away from their original aesthetic.

The damage done to both films is that you view them as separate entities, which leads to pointless exercises in critical approach whereby you try to reconcile the more authentic ‘look’ of ‘Planet Terror’ with the post-modern ironic playfulness of ‘Death Proof’ instead of thinking “zombie movie – cool; car chase movie – cool”. Or ruminating on the promise of the erotic given the plethora of eye candy (two quartets of heroines in ‘Death Proof’; cleavages a-go-go courtesy of Rose McGowan, Marley Shelton and Stacy Ferguson in ‘Planet Terror') and the non-inclusion of actual nudity (want topless women? the ‘Machete’ trailer’s the only place you’ll find ’em) and coming to the conclusion that an implied salaciousness : disappointment ratio is par for the course in exploitation movies and Rodriguez and Tarantino have played on this most effectively … when you should, of course, be thinking “wow, hot chicks”.

Tim comments, in his brilliantly written review, “the structural vulernability of Grindhouse makes it the same as those things it mimics, even while the very soul of Grindhouse is that, as a mimic, it is not the same thing. Therefore, the film becomes both thesis and antithesis”, and he’s absolutely right. To discuss structure is perhaps the most intelligent way to approach ‘Grindhouse’ critically. Otherwise, as just as valid, you can simply kick back with a big tub of popcorn, turn off your critical faculties and let your mind go “zombies, cool … wow, Rose McGowan’s a fox … machine gun leg … shoot-outs, cool … stuff blowing up … fast cars, cool … wow, Vanessa Ferlito’s a fox … Kurt Russell being a badass, cool … wow, how long’s this car chase gone on for? …” and so on and so forth.

They’ve been constructed deliberately – and a lot more cleverly than a first viewing might lead you to believe – but the component parts of ‘Grindhouse’ are quite simply a hymn to the gleeful pleasures of moviegoing in an age where hot chicks, fast cars, cheesy special effects and 90-minutes of low-budget mayhem were their own raison d’etre.

Comparing and contrasting the films is a redundant exercise. The distributors, by splitting ‘Grindhouse’ in two, have left the likes of your humble blogger here with no choice other than to do just that. I was even tempted to use this post as a prologue to articles on ‘Planet Terror’ and ‘Death Proof’ over the next two evenings.

But I won’t because I’m convinced that if I ever get to see ‘Grindhouse’ in the format Messrs Rodriguez and Tarantino intended me to, then I’ll have seen a masterpiece of post-modern throwback indulgent irony. Yup, I know those last four words seem like a quadrille of contradiction but I reckon the movie that underperformed in America and never made it to the UK has what it takes to synthesise them; and until ‘Grindhouse’ gets released in this country in its original format (preferably in a theatrical run), or until I can get my hands on a Region 1 DVD, it will have to remain the best movie I’ve almost seen.