Danny Butterman

''Hot Fuzz'' is a 2007 buddy cop action comedy film directed by Edgar Wright, who co-wrote the film with Simon Pegg. Pegg stars as Nicholas Angel, an elite London police officer, whose proficiency makes the rest of his team look bad, causing him to be re-assigned to a West Country village where a series of gruesome deaths take place. Nick Frost stars alongside him as Police Constable Danny Butterman, Angel's partner. Jim Broadbent co-stars.

''Hot Fuzz'' is the second and most commercially successful film in the ''Three Flavours Cornetto'' trilogy, succeeding ''Shaun of the Dead'' and followed by '' The World's End''. Over 100 action films were used as inspiration for the script.

Principal photography took place in Wells, Somerset for eleven weeks and ten artists worked on VFX, which involved explosions, gory gunfire scenes and a flip book. Released on 16 February 2007 in the United Kingdom and 20 April in the United States, ''Hot Fuzz'' received acclaim from critics and grossed US$80 million worldwide on a budget of $12–16 million. In 2020, ''Empire'' named it the 67th-greatest film of the 21st century.

Plot

Nicholas Angel, a recently promoted Metropolitan Police Sergeant, is reassigned to the rural town of Sandford, Gloucestershire, for being too exceptional. Angel arrests Danny Butterman for drunk driving, but later discovers that he is the son of Inspector Frank Butterman, and a police officer himself. Angel is frustrated by the village's mundanity, his and Frank's incompetent colleagues, and the Neighbourhood Watch Alliance (NWA)'s prioritisation of low crime statistics over law enforcement. Angel and Danny stop the two lead actors of a local production of ''Romeo and Juliet'' for speeding. A cloaked figure later murders the actors, and their deaths are staged as a car crash; only Angel suspects foul play.

Angel and Danny discover an illegal weapons stash, including an old sea mine, and confiscate it. Angel warms to Danny, and together they binge-watch action films at Danny's house. That night, a cloaked figure attacks wealthy land developer George Merchant in his home, and kills him in a gas explosion. Angel suspects that the deaths are connected to a recent property deal.

Tim Messenger, a local journalist, approaches Angel at the village fête, claiming to have information. However, a cloaked figure kills Messenger by dislodging masonry from the church's tower. Angel learns from Leslie Tiller, the village florist, about her plans to sell her land to Merchant's business partners. While Angel is retrieving his notebook, a cloaked figure murders Tiller with her garden shears and escapes. Angel suspects supermarket manager Simon Skinner, as the property deal would have built a rival supermarket, but Skinner has an alibi.

After surmising that there are multiple killers, Angel is attacked in his hotel room by Michael "Lurch" Armstrong, an employee of Skinner. He incapacitates Lurch and learns about a secret NWA meeting at Sandford Castle. The NWA, led by Frank, reveals that they committed the murders and staged them as accidents because each victim threatened Sandford's chances of winning "Village of the Year". Irene, Frank's late wife and Danny's mother, put everything into helping Sandford win the first-ever competition, but travellers moved in and ruined their chances the night before the adjudicators arrived, driving her to suicide. Frank has since vowed to help Sandford win "Village of the Year" every year, whatever the cost. Angel flees, but stumbles into the castle's catacombs, discovering the corpses of the NWA's victims, some of whom Angel had helped arrest or question – including his predecessor, Sergeant Popwell. Danny suddenly appears and feigns murdering Angel. While pretending to dispose of him, Danny urges Angel to return to London for his own safety. Although initially leaving for London, Angel stops at a convenience store and takes heart after seeing a display of action-movie DVDs, returns to Sandford. After visiting the police station and arming himself with the confiscated guns, Angel engages in a shootout with the NWA, with Danny joining Angel during the battle. When Frank orders the other officers to arrest them, the pair successfully convinces them of Frank's complicity.

Frank flees, and the officers besiege the supermarket, with Skinner escaping in a police car with Frank. After Angel and Danny engage the offenders in a high-speed chase and shootout, Angel corners Skinner at Sandford's model village. After a fight, Skinner is impaled on a miniature church steeple. Frank attempts to escape in Angel's car, but a swan that the pair had recaptured earlier attacks him. Angel's former superiors ask him to return to London as the crime rate has risen heavily in his absence, but Angel declines and elects to remain in Sandford.

While the officers are reviewing the paperwork of the many arrests, Tom Weaver, the last NWA member, enters the station wielding a blunderbuss. He shoots at Angel, but Danny takes the hit. In the resulting struggle, Weaver accidentally activates the sea mine, killing himself and destroying the station. One year later, Angel has been promoted to Inspector and Danny, having survived, has been promoted to Sergeant. After visiting Irene's grave, the two drive to their next crime scene.

Cast

Production

Development

Director Edgar Wright 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." Wright and 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 1990s. 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 many action films' titles "seem to be generated from two hats filled with adjectives and nouns and you just, 'Okay, that'll do.'" While writing the script, Wright, as well as Pegg, intended to include Frost as the partner for Pegg's character. Frost revealed that he would do the film only if he could name his character, and he chose "Danny Butterman".

Preparation and filming

During the latter half of 2005, Working Title Films approached several towns in South West England looking for an appropriate filming location. Pegg commented, "We're both egg and Wrightfrom 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 in Somerset, Wright's hometown, of which he has said "I love it but I also want to trash it". Wells Cathedral was digitally painted out of every shot of the cathedral city, 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 (and was itself used as the setting for some scenes). While shooting scenes in their uniforms, Pegg and Frost were often mistaken for genuine police officers and asked for directions by passers-by. Filming also took place at the Hendon Police College, including the driving school skid pan and athletic track and at the Metropolitan Police Specialist Training Centre at Gravesend. Next to Hendon is Mill Hill where Finchley Nurseries is located which is where the flower shop scene was filmed. The final scenes were filmed at the surviving ruins of Waverley Abbey. 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.

Outside references

Self-references

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.

References to ''Shaun of the Dead'' are also present in the film. In one scene, Nicholas wants to chase a shoplifter by jumping over several garden fences; however, Danny is reluctant. Nicholas says, "What's the matter, Danny? You never taken a shortcut before?" He smiles assuredly before jumping over four in a row (according to the DVD commentary, Pegg vaulted over three fences, and a stunt man did a back flip over the fourth). When Danny attempts it, he trips and falls through the first fence and climbs over the second. This is almost identical to a scene in ''Shaun of the Dead'', including the fall-through-fence gag, albeit with the pratfalling role reverse: in ''Shaun of the Dead'' it happens to Pegg's character rather than Frost's, and he falls over the fence rather than through it. The DVD commentary says that Frost purposely looked back at the camera after crashing through the fence, to show that he had done the stunt rather than someone else.

Frost's characters (Danny in ''Hot Fuzz'', Ed in ''Shaun of the Dead'') have a liking for Cornetto ice cream. Pegg and Wright have referred to ''Hot Fuzz'' as being the second film in the "Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy", with ''Shaun of the Dead'' being the first and '' The World's End'' being the third.

Other films

Various scenes in ''Hot Fuzz'' feature a variety of action film DVDs such as '' Police Story 3: Super Cop'' and scenes from ''Point Break'' and ''Bad Boys II''. Wright revealed that he had to get permission from every actor in each video clip, including stunt men, 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 people's 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 had played a policeman tough on law and order.

Pop culture

In 2020, Wright indicated on social media that the title of the film was an apparent reference to the 2004 debut studio album ''Hot Fuss'' by the Killers. However, he has also said that the title of the film "means nothing."

Special effects

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. 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 and the Holy Grail''">Monty_Python_and_the_Holy_Grail.html" ;"title="'Monty Python and the Holy Grail">'Monty Python and the Holy Grail''" The most time-consuming gore sequence involved a character's head being crushed by a section of a church. A dummy was used against a Chroma key">green screen