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Hot Fuzz, the second film in the Three Flavours Cornetto series by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, is a homage to over 100 action films, mostly the timeless buddy cop. Like any other buddy cop, it is filled to the brim with comedy, action, and mystery. However, while most buddy cop films make an effort to remind the viewers that both main characters are straight men, Hot Fuzz makes no such efforts.
Main characters Nicholas Angel and Danny Butterman (played by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost respectively) aren’t presented with a damsel-in-distress to save and fall in love with, nor are they given a doting wife at home. The role of love interest falls on Danny instead, making the relationship between him and Nicholas blurred between a typical buddy cop duo and budding romance.
Gruff Hero + Goofy Sidekick
At first glance, Hot Fuzz is set up like a normal buddy cop, with one character filling the role of “gruff, action-ready hero” and another filling the role of “goofy, inept sidekick.” Nicholas Angel is the “hero.” The film starts by listing out all his credentials, ranging from getting top grades in every area of police training to having been notably injured several times while on duty.
This quickly establishes Nicholas as an extremely dedicated, top cop in the London Metropolitan Police Force. However, that greatness comes at a cost for Nicholas. At the beginning of the movie, Nicholas is forcibly transferred to the countryside village of Sanford. When he tries to convince his boss to let him stay in London, he is refused because his extremely high arrest statistics make the rest of his department “look bad (( Wright, Edgar, director. Hot Fuzz. Universal Pictures, 2007. )).” His dedication to his job also costs him his long term relationship with a woman named Janine. After he receives news of his transfer, he goes to have one last talk with her and reminds her that they were once thinking about marriage.
Janine rebuffs him, saying that he is incapable of “switching off” from his job, and ends the conversation (and their relationship) by telling him “until you find a person you care about more than your job, you never will (( Wright, Edgar, director. Hot Fuzz. Universal Pictures, 2007. )).” Within the first fifteen minutes of the film, Nicholas Angel is set up to be a typical hero of action films: a man who is always ready for the next battle and is socially outcast because of this.
While Nicholas Angel is the hero, Danny Butterman is the sidekick of Hot Fuzz. The first shot of Danny shows him drunk at the pub in Sanford. His first real action is attempting to drive drunk, almost hitting Nicholas in the process. The reveal of his status as a police officer is played as a comedic scene, immediately setting him up as incompetent and ridiculous. When Danny starts questioning Nicholas about Nicholas’s past on the force, it’s clear that what Danny knows about police officers comes from action-packed films like Point Break and Bad Boys II. His questions range anywhere from “What’s it like being stabbed?” to “Is it true that there’s a point on a man’s head where if you shoot it, it will blow up (( Wright, Edgar, director. Hot Fuzz. Universal Pictures, 2007. ))?”
This inexperience also means that Danny quickly becomes enamored with Nicholas. Danny is excited to be Nicholas’s partner as it means he can watch Nicholas in action (“action” here meaning mostly keeping the peace through catching escaped swans and stopping petty thieves). So while Nicholas gets to continue proving himself the action hero, Danny struggles to keep up as a sidekick, giving comedic relief to otherwise over the top scenes.
More Than Friendship…
Though Nicholas and Danny fill the archetypes of an average, heterosexual buddy cop, it’s their roles in Hot Fuzz that make them interpretable as gay. While the film’s main conflict is a series of mysterious deaths that may or may not be covered-up murders, Nicholas’ main character flaw is that he cannot “switch off” or prioritize interpersonal relationships over his job (as seen with Janine). Once stationed in Stanford, the slow nature of the village forces him to build relationships. However, the deepest of these relationships isn’t with a woman; it’s with Danny. Nicholas’s dedication to his job finds him at odds with the rest of the Stanford Police, and Danny is the only one on his side. When the stress of the mystery starts to get to Nicholas, it’s Danny who finally gets him to relax.
Just before the film’s climax, Danny invites Nicholas for a drink to the local pub, which Nicholas accepts. This is the first time Hot Fuzz shows Nicholas starting to switch off. While at the pub, Nicholas quietly opens up to Danny about why he wanted to be a police officer in the first place. This scene is a part of what TVTropes calls the “Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene:” a scene where the heroes discuss what they believe in or what’s important to them. But further than that, it’s the first time Nicholas lets his guard down. This continues when Danny invites Nicholas over to his place for another drink, where the two watch movies and fall asleep together on the couch.
While quiet, character-driven scenes aren’t uncommon in buddy cops, Hot Fuzz is different in that these two scenes can be read as romantic. Because Nicholas doesn’t have a girlfriend/wife/female love interest to incite the change in him, the work of getting Nicholas to “switch off” being a cop falls to Danny. As Nicholas starts to confront how his dedication to his job has cost him love previously and confesses he doesn’t think he knows how to stop it, it’s Danny who steps up to teach Nicholas how to relax. Danny literally tells him “I can show you (( Wright, Edgar, director. Hot Fuzz. Universal Pictures, 2007.))” in a romantically charged scene.
Furthermore, because there are no women in Hot Fuzz to fall into the trope of “damsel-in-distress,” Danny becomes the character that fills this hole. During the film’s climax, when the people behind the mysterious deaths in Sanford come after Nicholas, Danny tries to send Nicholas back to London for his own safety. Nicholas does begin to flee but turns back at the last moment to save Danny from the village. In the final shoot-out, Nicholas saves Danny from a few different dangers, even giving himself up on one particular occasion. In addition to this, once peace returns to Sanford, Danny and Nicholas are seen sharing a quiet moment at the grave of Danny’s mother. This scene mimics the final moments of other buddy cops and action films when the hero and female love interest are shown to live a happy life together once the action is over.
…Or Is It?
Though Hot Fuzz can be read as a gay love story between Nicholas and Danny, it is also possible to see it as a typical, straight buddy cop. A fair argument against a gay reading would be that it is, of course, possible for two men to be close to each other without being romantically linked. Nicholas and Danny’s relationship can be seen as just a fruitful and deep friendship, and it would be a valid reading.
Another argument could be that Hot Fuzz didn’t give either main male characters a woman to romance, not because they are gay, but simply because a romance would have felt wrong in the film. This could be backed up by the existence of Janine and another woman character that Danny admits to having had a crush on at some point. While it’s stated that Nicholas and Danny are attracted to these women, nothing happens with either of them, possibly because the story of Hot Fuzz didn’t have room for it.
A good example of both of these arguments in action can be seen in a film similar to Hot Fuzz: The Other Guys. Both films have the same character set up (gruff hero and inept sidekick), and both films are somewhat character-driven, with the characters bettering each other in some way. Both films have women characters who are essentially sidelined or included as the set up for a joke or character development. However, the women in The Other Guys are there to make it expressly clear that the main characters (played by Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg) are heterosexual. Will Ferrell’s character has a beautiful and doting wife who waits for him at home, and a running gag within the film is that Mark Wahlberg’s character has a crush on her. The women in The Other Guys are repeatedly used to remind the audience that the main characters are straight and are only friends, no matter how close the men’s relationship gets.
All Action Leads To Love
Buddy cop films are (for the most part) the vehicles for heterosexual and “masculine” aligned comedy, stuffed to the brim with explosions and high-speed chases. In that respect, Hot Fuzz is not much different. It’s action-packed, thrilling, and full of laughable moments like the buddy cops it pays homage to. However, its predecessors’ similarities end once the audience looks at the relationship between Nicholas and Danny. While it is easy to wave the relationship off as a “good friendship,” the fact that neither character ends up with a girlfriend or wife, and instead better each other through soft openness, makes it hard to dismiss them as lovers by the end of the film. Having Simon Pegg confirm that the love story is between the two of them doesn’t hurt, either.