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 Damned United

Full disclosure: I have no interest in football. I am, however, Nottingham born and bred and I was seven when Nottingham Forest won the European Cup in 1979, a feat they reprised the following year. Brian Clough was – and is – a legend in Nottingham. The A52 connecting Nottingham and Derby has been re-signposted as ‘Brian Clough Way’ (apposite given his track record managing clubs in both cities) and his statue was unveiled in the Market Square in November last year.

So it was out of curiosity as to how well Michael Sheen’s performance captured Cloughie’s trademark admixture of charm and belligerence that me and my friend Aidy headed to the Broadway Cinema last Saturday night for a screening of ‘The Damned United’. Our better halves evinced no interest in the film and occupied themselves otherwise while we attended the screening, then enthusiastically discussed the film in the pub afterwards.

If this makes ‘The Damned United’ sound like a blokey movie – trawl up to the cinema with a bunch of mates, cheer at Sheen’s heroic performance, then head for the boozer afterwards – then I’m doing the film a disservice. There’s nothing laddish about it at all, and the amount of actual on-the-pitch footage would probably add up to little more than a couple of minutes. What ‘The Damned United’ is really about is friendship, rivalry and overreaching ambition.

Tom Hooper’s film, adapted by Peter Morgan from David Peace’s novel, contrapuntally charts Clough’s miraculous leadership at Derby County in the late ’60s and early ’70s, dragging the club from Second Division doldrums and turning them into fiery First Division contenders, with his disastrous 44-day managership of Leeds United in 1974.

Leeds were then at the forefront of British football, undisputed champions, and relations were loyal and productive between them and manager Don Revie. They were also aggressive on the pitch and had a dubious disciplinary record. ‘The Damned United’ takes the rivalry between Clough and Revie (Colm Meaney) as its central dynamic, Revie snubbing Clough at a Leeds vs Derby match, refusing to shake his hand, and Leeds trouncing Derby in several clashes over the years, Clough’s players fouled and injured by Leeds’ thuggery.

So when Clough’s outspokenness and habit of royally pissing off Derby chairman Sam Longson (Jim Broadbent) sees him and assistant manager Peter Taylor (Timothy Spall) relieved of their duties, he reluctantly accepts a job with Brighton & Hove Albion. Taylor relishes the challenges of building up the club from nothing (ie. the Third Division, which is pretty much the definition of “nothing”), but Clough rails against the seaside, the boarding houses and cafes, and the general ubiquity of Southerners. The moment Revie quits Leeds United to manage the England squad, Clough takes the job.

He loses no time in earning the animosity of his team. Day one, first address to his players: “The first thing you can do for me is to chuck all your medals and all your caps and all your pots and all your pans into the biggest fucking dustbin you can find, because you’ve never won any of them fairly. You’ve done it all by bloody cheating.”

What follows is kind of like ‘Downfall’, but with a football stadium instead of a bunker.

Michael Sheen is simply astounding in the lead role; following on from recent turns as Tony Blair and David Frost, the man’s king of the biopic, with a real gift for evoking the personalities he plays. Timothy Spall is an odd casting choice for Taylor, physically nothing like him, but succeeds in capturing the frustration and affection that characterised the two men’s turbulent relationship. Colm Meaney brings a dour gravitas to his characterisation of Revie, even if the role is tad underwritten. But it’s perhaps Jim Broadbent who deserves a man of the match award, jettisoning a good decade’s worth of twinkly comedic roles and really getting under the skin of old-school chairman Longson, a working class man made good whose patience is sorely tested by Clough’s cavalier attitude towards him and the board. The verbal stand offs between Clough and Longson, particularly when Longson suggests that Clough give Leeds an easy victory so they can play a stronger side against Juventus in a forthcoming European match, are tour de forces.

I mentioned at the start of this piece that I don’t like football. The main reason I don’t like it is the tribalism and the alpha male bullshit that goes with it. There’s a scene where Clough, being interviewed for TV, states that football is “a beautiful game and it should be played beautifully”. Amen to that. Cloughie’s a local hero – hell, a national one – and although his family have spoken out against ‘The Damned United’, for my money it’s a damn fine film.