The Individual In Edgar Wright’s Cornetto Trilogy Part II: The Two Faces Of Fascism In HOT FUZZ

While Shaun of the Dead demonstrated that people are too conditioned to submit to authorities and leaders for protection, Hot Fuzz answers the “why” in the overarching equation with regards to people choosing to be braindead conformists or zombies. Whether it’s through fear or sheer brute force, Hot Fuzz paints a horrifying portrait of fascism from both ends of the cycle.

The Super Soldier

Embracing the goofiness and machoism of high-octane action extravaganzas from the 1980s and 1990s, and incorporating the grit and intrigue of the various crime and police procedural films from different eras, Pegg and Wright turned the mania up to eleven with their second entry in the trilogy, Hot Fuzz, as they designed yet another morbid reality where utopian hopes are massively misjudged.

A highly successful but ultra-serious police officer, Police Constable Nicholas Angel finds himself unwanted by the Metropolitan police service, who are jealous that his arrest records are more outstanding than any other member of the force (400 percent higher), thus making them look incompetent.For whatever reason, Angel fashions himself to be the ultimate knight to serve the realms of law and order; a well-oiled machine that is constantly monitoring his surroundings for the slightest hint of trouble, whether it be underage drinkers at a pub or a shoplifter, while also taking the paperwork extremely seriously. A firm believer in due process, he adheres to the book and never crosses the line that borders criminality.

As a result, he has become more wedded to his career than to his human, and subsequently, romantic relationships (his girlfriend dumps him for his lack of involvement, ironically mirroring Liz’s issues with Shaun). Whether it’s a defense mechanism or simply the result of his perfectionist mentality in becoming an emblem of justice, Angel has created an icy exterior for himself with his mind almost entirely focused on his job, therefore losing any sense of human interaction. Even though Nicholas Angel (Pegg) is the polar opposite of Shaun, he nevertheless becomes consumed by his inner demons in an Orwellian landscape.

“The Community That Cares”

Promoting him to sergeant, Angel’s superiors transfer him to the small village of Sandford, where long-time residents pride over its long streak of winning the “Village of the Year” award, due to it being extremely low on crime and boasting a united community spirit. Overseen by the Neighbourhood Watch Alliance (NWA), the village also happens to have a lacklustre police force, who don’t take their jobs seriously enough due to the lack of “city” crimes, an attitude which greatly disgusts Angel.

It doesn’t take long for Angel to become deeply suspicious of the rising number of fatalities that the police and NWA chalk up to random accidents. Inspector Frank Butterman (Jim Broadbent), also a member of the NWA, and his dimwitted son, Police Constable Danny Butterman (once again played by Frost), assure Nick that the town is easygoing and has none of the mayhem that big cities offer. Angel’s findings and theories are dismissed left and right, especially after he spends a lot of time researching the village’s history and infrastructure, linking the victims to possible motives of various NWA members that involve property deals.

While he is well-intentioned in trying to bring the true offenders to justice, Angel’s state of mind is similarly chaotic to Shaun’s, but in this case, it’s because he’s been conditioned to assume the worst given his vast experience. His attitude could be viewed as being rather cynical and fearful about conforming to a community, despite the fact that his job has always entailed protecting the community or maybe he simply doesn’t believe that any place can be idyllic and without crime. A scarier notion is that he might be in too deep within the structured cycle of police duty that he can only be fueled by the constant need to disarm and arrest perpetrators on a daily basis, and bring order to (what he deems to be) the chaos. In other words, he could be addicted to, and thus defined by, the idea of control.

While initially closed-off, Danny breaks through Angel’s gruff exterior, and the two form a bond (almost serving as the prequel to Pegg & Frost’s relationship in Shaun of the Dead), where Danny is in constant awe of Angel’s unmatched skills, as he fantasises about being involved in high-speed pursuits and firing various weapons like his favourite movie heroes do. Angel warns Danny that police work isn’t as much about fun and games as it is about the formalities, while Danny advises him to take himself less seriously and “switch off” once in a while so that he can appreciate life. Angel doesn’t think he can.

Dream Or Nightmare?

The deeper Angel gets into his investigation of the Sandford “accidents”, the more everyone treats him as a by-product of “big city” paranoia with an overactive imagination and a lot of paranoia. However (in a twist that recalls the horrors of 1973’s The Wicker Man), he discovers that the NWA is actually a cloak-wearing cult who murder everyone who fails to conform to the village’s aesthetics and ideals, which basically pertains to those who simply annoy them and commit blunders that are trivial in nature. Frank was motivated by the cause after his wife committed suicide, because of the “infestation” of people who threatened and compromised the “integrity” of their “model village”. “The community that cares” is a nightmarish perversion of the mythical “knights of the round table”; fueled by their own sense of self-validation, they maintain a warped moral compass and set of ideals, that keeps them regressive and unwilling to move on from out of the confines of the castle and village they operate from.

To Angel, the NWA are an extreme version of his own principles; whereas he tries to abide by a strict code, they simply mock how serious he takes himself and his work by purging their village of “threats”, even by dropping them in the catacombs beneath Sandford Castle, where they conduct their secret meetings. It’s a twisted sense of justice they’ve adopted in order to accommodate their own vision of a timeless utopian dream, which they refer to as “the greater good”. They are vigilantes who’ve created an invisible totalitarian regime; a dark kingdom that makes undesirables disappear, and brainwashing villagers into thinking they are living in a dream world uncontrolled by a higher power, thereby stripping them of their free will.

In addition to practically controlling the law through Inspector Butterman, it doesn’t help that the NWA are made up of people who hold significant positions in the village like Simon Skinner (Timothy Dalton) who manages the local supermarket; Dr Robin Hatcher (Stuart Wilson), the village’s resident doctor; Mary and Roy Porter (Julia Deakin & Peter Wight), who run the local pub (significant in the context of the Cornetto trilogy, at the very least), called “The Crown”; and Professor Tom Weaver (Edward Woodward), who surveils the village through numerous cameras, playing on the Orwellian “Big Brother” motif.

Suddenly all the various structures that decorate the village’s infrastructure, including the cathedral, cease being breathing entities of a loving community, and instead become components of a ghost town that exists between massive kingdoms; a memory of a pure home lost in time, and only rebuilt through danger and deception. They keep people happy and loyal by employing them, treating them, and more importantly, celebrating their existence. It’s almost a surreal experience to see how friendly the townspeople are with one another, with only Angel being the one doing away with the rose tinted spectacles.

While they do seem to care about their citizens, they are quick to turn on those who disappoint them if ever so slightly. Even one of their own, Leslie Tiller (Anne Reid), isn’t spared, after she decides to sell her house and leave the village. “If we can’t have her, no one can”, Hatcher says coldly but honestly. 

An Agent Of Chaos

Seeing as there is no hope in bringing sense to them, Angel tries to arrest them but they do not recognise him as the face of the law and arrange to have him killed. After Danny, who remains loyal to his father, pretends to fatally stab Angel, he drives him away to safety. Angel tries to encourage Danny to do the right thing and bring the NWA to justice, but Danny, unable to shake off his father’s influence, tells him to go back to London.

Once Angel leaves, he is suddenly struck by the realisation that maybe he shouldn’t take things too seriously and dumb things down like one of Danny’s action heroes to bring some sort of order. He then arms himself with a good deal of confiscated weaponry from the police station (much to everyone’s ignorance), sporting shades and militaristic armour, and rides into town on horseback to challenge the NWA as a one-man army.

Angel’s sunglasses could be a reference to the ones Roddy Piper wore in the anti-capitalist They Live, initially being the only way of seeing the enemy for who they really are, while his demeanour reflects that of Dirty Harry, where taking matters into his own hands is the only option when the law is no longer competent or recognised (or so he feels). Like the aforementioned characters, and even more so like a samurai or medieval soldier, Angel shuns the political power that governs Sandford (as he only sees criminals holding an anarchic village hostage), and instead opts to introduce chaos to the equation.

As the battle for Sandford ensues, Danny joins Nicholas in his fight (inspired by his courage and the fact that he can finally relate to him on equal levels), eventually standing up to his own father in a heavily cathartic moment. As the other members of the force witness this and have the situation explained, they regain their sense of free will, and join forces with Nicholas and Danny to finish the job. After much mayhem and bloody violence leads to the imprisonment of the NWA, Angel and the police arrest the NWA, and opts to repair the village instead of returning to London to combat the rising crime. At the station, Weaver shoots Danny (who takes fire for Angel), and after a struggle, Weaver accidentally detonates a sea mine, which kills him and destroys the building.

“The Greatest Village Of The Year”

Spawning from the ashes is a newly established police force that governs the village of Sandford a year after the takedown of the NWA, with Angel being both inspector and head of the department, while Danny (who survived the attack) has been made sergeant. While they both seem content and happy about the blessing that they are experiencing, something isn’t right with the picture. Angel dons the black-clad militaristic getup that doesn’t scream “keeping the peace”, and there’s a noticeably aggressive demeanour he displays after getting the call about what seems like a terribly minor offense (if that) about hippies messing around with recycling bins.

The Battle for Sandford may have exhibited Angel’s resorting to vigilantism as merely a means to an end, but what it really did was create a revolutionary; one that starts off as an outsider who recognises the village’s blind conformity, and ends up restoring its individuality, while also monitoring it like a hawk (and ruling it with an iron fist).

“The greater good” is a philosophy that both Nicholas and the NWA have adopted; both entities represent fascism, but they just so happen to spread their ideology from opposite extremities. Frank (and the NWA) chose to honour his wife’s memory by ensuring the village would maintain its image of a perfect Eden, by simply killing and burying all those who threaten it. Nicholas and Danny now choose to do so by making sure everyone they deem to be a wrong-doer stay fearful of the law, by any means necessary, even if it doesn’t necessary lead to death.

Shaun was about the struggles of individuality and how impossible it might be to make a difference in a place where your existence is being manipulated and moulded by forces (seemingly) beyond your control. In Hot Fuzz, we get a glimpse of those forces on a smaller scale, by witnessing their somewhat unexplainable evolution into a power-hungry force or simply by paying attention to what was hiding in plain sight. Essentially, the first film was told from the perspective of the subjects oblivious to the fascism that controls them, and the second film is about the subjects who become the fascists.

While there’s no clear explanation as to why Angel became that which he battled (which was brilliantly and explicitly foreshadowed in the “crossword puzzle” scene), it could be so that nothing slips by him ever again and gaining the upper hand. Ironically, he has managed to gain the ideal relationship that would suit his lifestyle, with the community he’d rather keep company with. Although he may not even be aware of the fact that he’s gotten lost inside the monster that fed on his fears and neuroses, he may change his tune once he’s had his fill of beating civilians into submitting to (his own vision of) law & order. As Judge Dredd always said, “I am the Law”.

Next up, The World’s End!

Do you agree with Nicholas Angel and his methods? Do you think Sandford is in a better place by the end of the film? Let us know in the comments below!