Monday, February 22, 2016

Where the Action Is

by Brittany Schmidlin

The movie that I chose to watch this week was Hot Fuzz, a very action-packed comedy. The film was a lot more cynical and violent than I had expected it to be, but was still very humorous as well. The film provides numerous cliché police/detective movie, but presented them in a knowingly comical way. There are many examples throughout the duration of the film that calls attention to specific genre conventions for comedic effect. One of the most obvious genre conventions to me was the film “unexpected” uncovering of dark mysteries in a small, seemingly harmless town. When Officer Nicholas Angel was transferred to the small town of Sandford, he believes it to be relatively calm and quiet. This makes the officer feel as though his efficient police work to be useless there. Numerous deaths start to occur and Nicholas eventually discovers the whole village is involved in a murderous conspiracy. The comedic effect of the conspiracy was the ridiculous motives behind it. People were killed for irrational things like being unattractive or having an annoying laugh.

A scene that I found to be humorous scene of relevance was the scene where Officer Angel and Officer Danny attempt to capture a swan that is loose.  They don’t successfully capture the swan the first time, but the similar conversation of the swan leads Angel to discover there is more than one murderer. When the duo fails to capture the swan a woman asks, “No luck finding them swans, then?” Danny replies, “It’s just the one swan, actually,” Later on in the plot, Nick and Danny’s murder investigation isn’t go that well. A clerk asks “No luck finding them killers, then?” Then Danny again replies, “It’s just the one killer, actually.”

The cast in itself has several well-known British comedians that brought a lot to each of their characters. Just knowing who the actors were made the movie way more humorous to me. I believe Nicholas Angel’s partner, Danny Butterman, made the movie a little lighter due to his lovable character. His character mentions the cop movies Bad Boys II and Point Break several times throughout the film, asking Nick if he has done any of the things that are included in the action films. Further linking themselves into the genre conventions, he ends up doing most all of the cliché actions by the end of the movie such as; firing guns while jumping in the air and being involved in a car chase. 


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