The comedy geniuses behind "Shaun of the Dead" have proven once that they can turn a movie genre on its ear without stiffing moviegoers -- so it only made sense to try busting another.
And without question, Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright and Nick Frost have succeeded at doing it again with "Hot Fuzz," an arresting action comedy that lights a fire under the buddy cop movies of the 1980s and 90s.
Of course, the natural follow-up for "Shaun of the Dead," a gut-busting zombie movie send-up that has become a cult hit in the U.K. and U.S., would have seemed to been a sequel. But for Pegg, who co-wrote and stars in "Hot Fuzz" (Wright co-wrote and directed the film and Frost co-stars), the idea of doing another "Shaun" off the bat would have been, well, a dead end.
"Working Title films wanted to know if we wanted to make a sequel, but everybody sort of dies in 'Shaun of the Dead,'" Pegg said with a laugh in a recent @ The Movies interview. "I think what most people cared about with the film was relationship between Shaun and Ed. But Ed is no more at the end of the film. He's happy, but he's not the same person. It would have been quite boring."
But just because Ed was dead -- or at least functioning as a zombie -- at the end of "Shaun," real-life best friends Pegg and Frost weren't about to let the idea of working in tandem again rest in peace.
Enter the buddy cop movie genre, which gave life to a whole new idea.
'It's why we decided to do a buddy movie, to capitalize on the strength of the first film," Pegg said.
Here Come The 'Fuzz'
In "Hot Fuzz," Pegg plays Nicolas Angel, a London cop who's so good at his job that he makes everybody else look bad.
Reluctantly transferred to the sleepy English village of Sanford by his jealous colleagues, Angel painfully tries to adapt to the slower change of pace. But when a series of grizzly deaths in the village smack of foul play, Angel snaps back into action, with his new partner, the lovably oafish constable Danny Butterman (Frost) at his side.
Also starring Jim Broadbent, Edward Woodward, Bill Nighy and Timothy Dalton, "Hot Fuzz" opens Friday in select theaters nationwide.
"Hot Fuzz" doesn't hide the fact that it's taking to task a smattering of cop movies, from "Die Hard," "Dirty Harry" to "Heat" and "The Super Cops."
"We wanted to include every representation of the genre in there," Pegg said. "You got the fish-out-water storyline, a serial killer, some mystery, the action and the violent high-concept stuff."
Of course, while "Hot Fuzz" is at heart a comedy, Pegg said fairly representing the genre was something the actors and filmmakers took very seriously. In fact, the comedy of the film didn't come out of the efforts of the talent
trying to be funny, but with the same type of sincerity that the actors and filmmakers did with the original films -- even if that sincerity was woefully misguided from time to time. Because of that, Pegg is hard-pressed to call "Hot Fuzz" a spoof.
"We hesitate to use the word 'spoof,' because I think 'spoof' means that you're making fun -- and at no point are we making fun of that genre," Pegg said. "Sometimes in the film there are parodies that are very gentle in terms of the use of recurring clichés. But the whole thing is fundementalized by affection. It's never sneery or derisory. It's not like we're doing it because we thought the cop genre had it coming. We don't. We love it."
In fact, being at a cultural disadvantage, "Hot Fuzz" gave Pegg and company an opportunity to fulfill a fantasy.
"Being born in the U.K., we thought we were never going to be in a film like that, at least being a lead," Pegg added. "So, we were like, let's just make one ourselves and set it in a village. It's our way of having our cake and eating it."
While "Hot Fuzz" doesn't have any zombies, a la "Shaun of the Dead," it does have its share of gore. Pegg said that including the gruesomeness to the fold wasn't so much about their own affinity for horror films, as it was the wicked turn the cop movie genre took with the popular rise of slasher films.
"We were really to trying to appeal to fans of some of the cop movies of the late 1980s and early 90s, which had that element of extreme violence in them," Pegg said. "After 'Halloween,' there were cop movies that became hybrids of the genre and the horror film genre."
The difference, of course, is like "Shaun," the gore is meant to inspire laughs.
"It's 'Itchy and Scratchy' more than anything," Pegg mused. "When you have a film where the intention is a little darker and a bit more cruel like 'The Devil's Rejects,' 'Wolf Creek' 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,' where the violence is hard to watch. You could have less graphic violence in those films than ours and it would still disturb you more because the impetus behind it isn't comic."
Preview: 'Hot Fuzz'
