We are moving in a different direction for Everything But Bone this week as we journey into Edgar Wright’s masterpiece Hot Fuzz (2007). While it can be categorized as an action film, I believe it certainly has elements of horror. Grim Reaper-like killers afoot, nasty murders, and remember when the church roof falls on Tim Messenger? Yikes.
I’ve picked Hot Fuzz to discuss how well it is edited. There are over 5,500 different cuts in the film. You probably won’t notice the intricate editing during the first watch through, I know I didn’t. Many have written that Wright uses editing to enhance the already strong visual comedy. Visual storytelling is essentially giving the audience information and editing provides framing for that information. Things that are average or ordinary in the world of Hot Fuzz become hilarious and over the top thanks to the way they are edited together.
Before we go into the analysis, its best to put the film in context as it helps to explain why the editing works the way it does. Hot Fuzz is the second film in Wright’s Cornetto Trilogy, which also includes Shaun of the Dead (2004) and The World’s End (2013). All three films feature collaborations with actors Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.
Pegg plays PC Nicholas Angel who is too good at his job as a police(man) officer in Metropolitan London. Due to his ability to make his colleagues look bad, Angel is promoted and transferred to the countryside village of Sanford. The seemingly peaceful place has a dark secret that Angel and his partner Danny Butterman (Nick Frost) must solve.
Besides the talents of director Edgar Wright, the true kudos is to Editor Chris Dickens. Dickens got his start editing documentaries for the BBC and later moved on to comedies. He met Wright during his tenure on the TV comedy Spaced (1999–2001) and would go on to edit Shaun of the Dead before working on Hot Fuzz.
According to Dickens (in an interview found here), he and Wright wanted “a fast-paced style to mimic action films. There are quite a lot of cuts in some sections to create transitional elements and to show police procedure…A lot of the cuts are nearly invisible and others are intentional, such as jump cuts. We wanted the cutting at times to draw attention to itself. There are also other invisible things, like hidden split-screens in a shot to pick up the pace within that shot.” Sounds like a lot of work for something that likely would not get much praise from the average theatre goer, but Hot Fuzz wouldn’t have been half as good without it.
Let’s explore specific scenes in the film and how they are edited.
The opening is one the best exposition scenes in any film. So much information is given to the audience about Nicholas Angel and who he is as a person. The writing maxim is always “show, don’t tell.” Luckily Wright and Dickens created a telling sequence that is visually humorous and entertaining to viewers, while portraying massive amounts of characterization and backstory.
Angel’s introduction begins with him walking down a long hallway, where he is the perspective point. Once we see Angel’s face and his all too serious expression, we are treated to a series of rapid vignettes about him. The majority of them are about him doing average police work with his exception skill. Only a few moments could be considered “action.” But because of how rapid these little scenes move on screen, it feels like we are watching an action scene. Sure, its exposition, but the audience is never bored due to its pace.
Another moment in the film where something dull is made interesting through editing is when Angel travels from London to Sanford. Like the opening, it is edited in short cuts. The audience laughs at Angel’s consistent downer expression as he gets more and more out into the countryside. In the shots there is little motion, but the setting changing around Angel show that he is definitely going from one place to the other. And while this scene might contain little motion, visually, the hard cuts in audio helps to give the images a feeling of locomotion.
Hot Fuzz functions as both a deconstruction and reconstruction of police films, one of the reoccurring jokes is that real life police work requires a ton of paperwork. Watching a movie character fill out paperwork is dull, but Hot Fuzz puts it together like it’s a badass thing to do. Unusual camera angles and flashing lights give it a harder vibe.
The exaggerated camera work enhances the visual comedy for sure. During this watch through, one use of progressive close-ups sent me into a fit of laughter. Before the foot chase with pimply biscuit thief Peter Cocker, viewers are treated to close-up shots of Cocker and Angel’s faces. The shots cut between their horrified and angry expressions respectively. A regular action film would use this tension for drama, but because this is Hot Fuzz it’s sheer ridiculousness.
Editor Chris Dickens would later work on and be replaced in Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018). I don’t know why this happened, but it would have been interesting to see what he could have done with it. All in all, my rewatch of Hot Fuzz made me appreciate the film even more. It’s the little things, like during the boy’s pub night, the pound denominations getting smaller and smaller every time they get a drink. Hot Fuzz is a genre highlight that will likely become a standard for film students everywhere.
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