Hot Fuzz vs Green Street Hooligans

Hot Fuzz, like Shaun of the Dead before it, takes a genre I’m not particularly attached to, and spoofs it, while simultaneously attempting to up the ante a bit for the next filmmaker looking to make a non-spoof contribution to the genre. Shaun of the Dead wasn’t just a funny take on zombie movies, it happened to be a great zombie movie, period. Hot Fuzz takes on American action movies, specifically those of the 1980s and 1990s, and is successful, mostly, in the spoof department. It’s that simultaneously upping the ante part that causes a snag.

Simon Pegg stars as Sergeant Nicholas Angel, a strong, silent cop from London, who is so coolly efficient at his job, he makes his coworkers look bad. He’s transferred to a tiny village community, where the biggest jobs for law enforcers involve finding a stray swan, or maybe checking the fake I.D.s of underage drinkers. He’s got a new partner too, a wide-eyed cop, brilliantly named Danny Butterman, and brilliantly played by Nick Frost.

Butterman is a second generation cop, naïve about the ways of the real world, but expertly versed in the ways of American cop movies. He’s got a walk-in closet devoted to his DVD collection; his favorites are Point Break and Bad Boys II. The former of those two is saluted twice, once with an exhilarating footchase, and again with a hilarious Keanu shoot-out shout-out. Bad Boys II (as well as Lethal Weapon and Tango and Cash) is paid tribute throughout the movie, as Danny and Nicholas evolve from awkward rivals, to trusted allies, to best friends who share long, sensitive, knowing eye contact.

The village, as you might have guessed, is not just cute school children and afternoon tea. There’s an alarming rate of accidental deaths, most of which don’t look like anything other than murder. Nicholas Angel makes it his business to clean up the tiny, murderous village on his own, with Danny close behind at all times, hoping to witness a moment of action movie mayhem. Before it’s over, besides the Point Break chase, Danny will get to dive while firing guns, take part in a grocery store shoot-out, and witness several varieties of gruesome injuries and deaths.

In the last half hour.

I’ve made Hot Fuzz sound like a good time, yes? So did the trailer. The first two-thirds of it, while clever, are a little quaint for me, storywise, as Nicholas gets to know the community and warms up to Danny. That would be fine (hey, I’ve already praised State and Main on here; quaint I can handle), but the tone of the movie is that not of American action movies, but of the British. Hot Fuzz is edited like Guy Ritchie’s movies, where no one opens the fridge, grabs a bottle of beer, gets a glass, opens the beer, pours the beer and drinks it. In those movies, and Hot Fuzz, it’s door, beer, glass, glass full, beer chugged, glass down, car started, tires squeal, all in a series of quick cuts with overlapping audio. It’s fun the first hundred times, but after a while, it’s like watching slides on fast-forward. We’ve seen this technique in movies like Crank and The Transporter, both of which already feel more like spoofs of action movies than the real thing. In those movies, the quick cuts feel designed to distract us from stunts or special effects that maybe aren’t as tightly choreographed as they could have been. In Hot Fuzz, with the quick cuts just accenting scenes of conversation, strolling, driving slowly, it had the effect of a strobe light or an overly-aggressive screen saver: I was beginning to wish I’d snuck a Red Bull into the theater, just so I could chill out some.

Hot Fuzz is clever, make no mistake, and it’s got a great soundtrack and a few fun cameos I won’t spoil here. You know what else it had? A rockin’ trailer. Man, I’d watch that trailer again in a heartbeat.

Green Street Hooligans, like Hot Fuzz, manages to salute and spoof Americans and Brits simultaneously. Of course I’m pretty sure Green Street Hooligans doesn’t realize it’s saluting or spoofing anyone. Green Street Hooligans stars Elijah Wood as a British football thug. There you go. Enjoy.

Okay, there’s more to it than that. Elijah Wood plays a genius American college student named Matt who gets framed and busted on drug charges. To hide out, or start over, or maybe see what life’s like in shades of blue and gray (cause Green Street Hooligans is all shot in that murky, underwater palate that screams EDGY, and is edited just like Hot Fuzz), Matt moves to England to live with his sister in a crazy huge apartment with her baby and jerk husband. Matt wants to lay low, but before he has much say in the matter, he’s seen a football game, made a couple shady friends, and gotten his Fight Club on.

See kids, in England, there are huge soccer rivalries that extend off the field, and into the hearts and fists of the fans. And then, after and before games (and on days when there aren’t games), the fans gather in huge gangs and stage fights in streets and tunnels. They’re brutal, bloody affairs, like you’ve probably seen in, say, Gangs of New York. I guess. I believe whatever movies tell me, and this is what Green Street Hooligans told me. It’s pretty fun, and the punches look real, and Elijah Wood is an enjoyable actor.

But man, the whole thing is so serious. I get it: football is a huge deal there. But so huge that a new friend might not accept you until you’ve almost died at the hands of a rival team’s fans? So huge to require Braveheart-style battlefield speeches? Green Street Hooligans is hilarious in that sense, with its chants and fight songs and angry fathers. It’s fun though, especially if you’ve seen a few ridiculous American sports movies. How much better would Rudy be if Notre Dame fans were regularly meeting in parking lots, shouting “RUDY! RUDY! RUDY!” while they beat the shit out of rival gangs? I know! That movie would rock.

Hot Fuzz: B-
Green Street Hooligans: C+