Hot Fuzz

My favourite postmodern text is Hot Fuzz which was directed by Edger Wright and Simon Pegg in 2007. Hotfuzz is the second film in a trilogy in which ‘Shaun of the Dead’ was the first and the third is ‘The World’s End’ which is yet to be released. However this trilogy has been named the ‘ice-cream trilogy’ as each film represents a flavour of ice-cream. ‘Shaun of the Dead’ was red for horror film, ‘Hot Fuzz’ was blue for police film, and ‘The World’s End’ is going to be a sci-fi film which is green. Also each film has the corresponding ice-cream in the film usually a Cornetto so far therefore it’s extremely likely that the mint Cornetto is going to be in the last film somewhere.

What makes it postmodern is that it is a mixture of genres for example it's primarily a cop movie however it's also a comedy and thriller. This makes it postmodern as it becomes a genre hybrid. Furthermore it pays homage to certain movies by either copying a whole genre’s conventions or by scenes out of it. For example in the scenes near the end in the gun fighting PC Nicholas Angel is riding horseback into the village with ammunition belts and chewing a toothpick. This is very conventional of the western genre, but also in the fight scene there is a direct shot out of bad boys 2 where PC Nicholas Angel flies through the air shooting his pistols. This was also an earlier reference to the director John Woo who used it in his films. This makes it post-modern because it is intertextual of other films and it shows it not in a down-grading way but in a love of these films way.

‘Hot Fuzz’ also make tonnes more references to films such as ‘Trainspotting’ with the shoplifter chase and also reference to ‘Shaun of the Dead’ with reversing lines between Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in ‘Shaun of the Dead’ and ‘Hot Fuzz’ and even going as far as putting the ‘Shaun of the Dead’ DVD in the clearance basket in the superstore when Nick Frost is looking through. Another reference is when PC Nicholas Angel spits out his toothpick in reference to Clint Eastwood. Furthermore there is reference to the film ‘Leon’ and the Japanese Peace Lily. More references can be found at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425112/movieconnections

I like ‘Hot Fuzz’ because it is funny to watch and you can recognise some of the shots from other films in it and what it is referencing too.