I very happily caught HOT FUZZ tonight with movie bud recruits Jeannie, Kim, Jeff, and Larry. It was my second screening (the first was the preview at the Brattle), and I'm pretty certain I've got at least one more in me, hopefully with another crew of HOT FUZZ virgins. I hope I wasn't too annoying to sit beside, what with me all rocking like a Quaker in anticipation of all the buddy-cop action goodness! =)*SPOILERS!* Do not read this until you've seen and loved HOT FUZZ! What I'm gonna do here is start a list of direct references/homages/re-creations that I can recall. Please comment with any corrections or identifications you make from your own viewings.
HARD BOILED (But probably could be a dozen other movies, too—involving a character taking a bullet or blade in the chest, but surviving because a gift or talisman in the victim's pocket deflects the blow). After Nick takes down Michael ("Yarp") with his peace lily, Danny arrives on the scene. Nick tells him to stay with Michael's body and somethin-or-other while he goes off to confront the true evildoers. Just as Nick is about to rush off, Danny stops him, picks up Nick's notebook, tells him something like, "You're gonna need this," and stuffs it in his breast pocket. Later, once the diabolical "Village of the Year" conspiracy is revealed and Nick is on the run from the NWA, Danny is the one to take him down, stepping out of the shadows to deliver a dagger into his chest. Of course, it only sinks into the notebook, into which Danny had slipped a ketchup packet or two. Frickin brilliant.
In HARD BOILED, Tony Leung, as the undercover triad killer, is sic'd on Little Ko, an informant, but doesn't want to kill him. Instead he wants to use him to deliver a message to Tequila (Chow Yun Fat), so when he's beating on him at a boardwalk area by the harbor, he slides his lighter, a birthday present from his captain, into Ko's breast pocket. When boss Johnny Wong and his men arrive on the scene, Tony pulls out his gun and delivers the coup de grace, a shot to the chest that sends Ko over the rail and into the water below. The lighter in Ko's pocket saves him from a mortal wound.
John Woo's HARD BOILED and THE KILLER are likely the biggest influence for any scenes with two-gun action, and frankly, are probably the inspiration for scenes in the other cop action flick HOT FUZZ sources, a la BAD BOYS 2. Groundbreaking archetypal stuff.
CHINATOWN. Danny lets Angel out of the trunk of the car, tells Angel to get out of Sandford, and Angel says that they can go back, together, and make things right. Danny tells him no... "It's Sandford." Last line from CHINATOWN.
LETHAL WEAPON. The fisticuffs between Nicholas Angel and Skinner in the model village felt like a daylight version of the final fight in WEAPON between Mel Gibson and Gary Busey's Mr. Joshua. Even down to rain from the busted fire hydrant showering them during the fight. I don't remember the exact choreography of the WEAPON action, but the consecutive punch-catching feels like it was taken directly from *something.* DIE HARD? Can anyone verify or point me in the right direction?
HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER. I will get my Clint Eastwood "Man With No Name" westerns mixed up sometimes, but I'm pretty sure it's DRIFTER that has him as the mysterious gunfighter who trots into a frightened town, terrorized by murderous outlaws, but also a town full of people hiding a conspiracy. In the end you find out that Eastwood's drifter is there to deliver justice, as (as Danny would say) "Judge Judy and executioner."
When Nicholas Angel returns to Sandford, armed for battle, and on a white stallion, we see the townspeople stop what they're doing and take notice. Many of them are peering from within their homes or businesses, through windows. Honestly, it might fit several Eastwood westerns, but DRIFTER is what immediately came to mind. With the cuts from Angel on horseback to the conspiring NWA members recognizing him, particularly the shots thru windows, it *felt* like what I remember of DRIFTER.
The white stallion also works as a great "white knight" prop for the buddy cop man love in Danny's eyes when he sees him return to town.
BAD BOYS II seems to be everywhere once the action gets rolling. Direct quotes like "This shit just got real" are peppered throughout, and probably any shot with Danny and Nicholas side by side, sunglassed, with the camera circling them, is from a shot in BB2. I don't endorse the source, but I appreciate Wright's homages. Of course, the slo-mo shot of the two of them with the helicopter overhead is BB2 gold.
It's just plain beautiful how POINT BREAK is worked into the film. If you're *really* paying attention in a meta way, and pretty well tuned-in to what Simon, Nick, and Edgar are doing with this movie, you *know* that Danny bringing up the Keanu-firing-the-gun-in-the-air-and-yelling-Auuugh! is anything but superfluous. I think I was too caught up with the joy of the film to explicitly predict it myself (these guys are That Good, goddammit! =), when the scene plays out, it is freakin brilliant! Y'know, I'd say that if you *did* guess that they'd do it, you would've guessed it would be a scene with Nick and Danny, right? But no! It's Danny and his dad, which is just freakin PERfect!
God, I love these guys.
I want to take them behind the junior high and get them pregnant!
Y'know... metaphorically.
Cuz there's no junior high round here.
Our babies would be so nerdy.
*dreamy sigh*
Damn, I'd love for the DVD to have an option to switch views/choose another angle during direct homages in the film, so you can flip to the relevant clip from the original inspiration, or even better, a split-screen view. Or at least have a subtitle track that identifies the sources and inspirations for scenes in writing on screen.
Frack. My nonsomnia is so freakin annoying. Time for me to go have a lie-down.
Keep on keepin on~
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