Hot Fuzz (2007)
As a glorious action comedy directed by Edgar Wright – from a script he co-wrote with Simon Pegg – Hot Fuzz takes the idea of a secret society and builds around it an epic homage to police movies, ranging from Bad Boys II and Lethal Weapon, to The Wicker Man and Point Break. The comedy is compounded by the fact that this type of outlandish action and mystery takes place in a sleepy, idyllic market town in England’s Gloucestershire.
Police Constable Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) is a notorious over-achiever with the Metropolitan Police. His fellow officers begin to tire of being in his shadow, however, and so he’s promoted to Sergeant and shipped off to Sandford – winner of the Village Of The Year award for many consecutive years. As he reluctantly settles into life in the Shire, alongside his new partner, PC Danny Butterman (Nick Frost), he frequently clashes with the local residents and his new boss – Inspector Frank Butterman (Jim Broadbent) – who collectively feel he’s perhaps a little heavy-handed in his investigative techniques, and expectations of the local population.
Gradually, a number of deaths occur, which the Neighbourhood Watch Alliance are keen to dismiss as accidents – claiming that Sergeant Angel has become so accustomed to policing in London, that he suspects foul play in everything he sees. The deaths continue, however, and Sergeant Angel is eventually able to connect the clues and identify the Neighbourhood Watch Alliance as responsible for the recent murders, and many more in years past. They are revealed to be a deadly secret society, which holds ritualistic meetings in an old churchyard. The motive for these murders is the preservation of Sandford’s status as Village Of The Year.
Hot Fuzz uses a secret society for the same purpose as The Da Vinci Code – to suggest that the reality experienced by the average citizen is a lie, fabricated by an elusive cabal intent on preserving a status quo from which they themselves benefit most. The beauty of Hot Fuzz, however, is that in juxtaposing the seemingly twee English Village Of The Year mission with the type of action usually found in a Richard Donner or Michael Mann movie, this film succeeds in bringing home the real, inescapable point: People who seek out absolute power will usually do anything they can to maintain that position. With things being as they are out here in the real world, we would all do well to remember that.