neah

I’m assuming the thing about him not holding a gun in two years would linked to that event and aftermath. He prefers a peaceful method of policing because shooting somebody traumatised him, and he never wants to ever have to do it again.

I’m reading the script, specifically the part where Nicholas uses the air rifle at the village fete, and it says “ANGEL fires, hitting every can dead centre with amazing speed. He lowers the rifle, feeling excited and unclean at once.” It states he feels “unclean,” which is really significant if we think about the trauma he might have from shooting somebody the last time he held a gun. It implies there’s bloodstains on him that never truly went away, memories he can’t scrub from his mind, and he feels uncomfortable in his own skin after going back to something he swore he’d never do again.

It also could suggest that he feels “unclean” because of the muscle memory that immediately kicks in when he holds the rifle. Maybe he believes that he is a natural murderer, a killing machine, and he’s tried to distance himself from that “fact” as much as possible. He’s so skilled with weapons, he’s taken a life, and it all comes so naturally to him. Maybe he scares himself? Maybe his own ability to end a life so quickly is terrifying to him, and the way he immediately knows his way around the rifle makes him feel sick to his stomach.

After Danny accidentally shoots Dr. Hatcher, Nicholas says “Believe me Constable. It’s not something you ever get used to.” This gives us more insight into how he feels about guns. It also implies he has shot more people than just the “crackhead” that was mentioned earlier, so it’s possible that his opinions around guns and the alleged trauma he carries with him doesn’t stem from just one incident, but multiple over time. Multiple deaths, too much bloodshed that ultimately led him to refusing to touch a gun ever again.

Off topic:

I also found it was interesting to note that it states that Danny is “terrified” when he sees Nicholas arriving in the town centre on his horse. Surely this implies that Danny doesn’t fully trust him? Or maybe it implies that he thinks that what he did—leaving him behind and cowering back to Sandford—was unforgivable, and now he believes Nicholas will lump him in with everybody else. Well, it’s less that he believes that Nicholas will feel that way, and it’s more of an irrational fear derived from his own guilt. He thinks he is just as bad as the NWA by being complacent.

That’s a bit of a stretch, to be honest. Maybe he’s just terrified because his best mate has loads of guns, but there’s no wrong answers in literature and I’m just brainstorming. I’m throwing ideas at the wall. Danny being terrified could also mean that he has a phobia of horses, lmao. It also says later that “DANNY sits in the car, his face a mixture of awe and panic.” This could probably imply more of an “oh shit he’s shooting at people, what do I do, but he’s so cool” sort of reaction. Maybe his initial fear is immediately settled when Nicholas doesn’t look at him with the same eyes he looks at the members of the NWA with.

Anyway, back on topic:

Nicholas never actually shoots anybody in the finale, and instead shoots around them and uses their surroundings to injure them. That, and he uses his baton and fists. This implies that he stays true to his morals even under extreme stress and pressure. It could also support my theory (it’s a theory now.) He doesn’t shoot anybody directly because he’s still scarred by all the times he did, and he’s still determined to never take a life ever again. Even whilst his own life is at risk, he refuses to retaliate to that extent. He’s traumatised from all of the bloodshed back in London, and he’s sworn to himself that he’d never let that happen ever again, no matter the cost.

I’m not going in chronological order, it’s bugging me too, but when Danny says he’s missing out on car chases and gun fights, Nicholas says this: “Arming the entire British Police Service would not necessarily lower the rate of crime. Guns aren’t toys Constable. Opening fire on another human being is a difficult and dizzying experience. If you’d paid attention to me in school, you’d know it’s not all about guns fights and car chases.” This obviously demonstrates how shooting another human being felt to him, even if he isn’t pouring his heart out. The word “dizzying,” a physical symptom, also implies trauma. Pairing this with the word “unclean,” we start to get a clear picture.

This whole section of script can’t be copied, so I’m using a photo:

Nicholas was in the armed response unit for two years. When questioned if he’d killed somebody, Cartwright doesn’t say that he “killed people,” he says that he “killed someone.” This obviously implies that in his time in the armed response unit, Nicholas only shot and killed one person. Nicholas doesn’t correct this, so you’d assume that Andy was correct, but if Nicholas was ashamed of his actions then surely he wouldn’t correct him and tell the table that he’d actually caused multiple deaths. There is no solid evidence of his kill count, so both causes of the trauma are still on the table. Trauma from one death, and trauma from multiple deaths over time.

Additionally, Nicholas refers to the situation as “regrettable.” The wording is very dismissive, but obviously he isn’t going to be opening up about his trauma to the people asking him these questions over pints within a few hours of meeting him. If we keep this in mind and think about the way Nicholas describes the incident, it starts to have a bit more weight. Regret weighs on a persons conscience. It’s something that never truly goes away because it’s an opinion; you can’t stop regretting something if the situation has already happened, and there’s no new developments. The circumstances won’t change, so Nicholas will never stop regretting it. Additionally, regret implies he repeatedly thinks about it and wishes the situation went differently. In these circumstances, that’s a huge hint towards the fact that the incident was traumatic for him.

He also states “the situation left me with no choice.” It’s clear that this is true, because we see that when presented with a choice, Nicholas will do everything in his power to avoid taking a life. Maybe this determination to avoid serious harm was amplified by the fact that he’d taken a life before, and it traumatised him. He was already trying his best to minimise the bloodshed because he was a good police officer with strong morals, but after that situation that left him scarred, he was even more determined even if it cost him his own life. I discussed this earlier stemming from a different piece of evidence, but in a slightly different way. Earlier I suggested that maybe the fact he didn’t take a life was because of his trauma, and now I’m suggesting that maybe his trauma just amplified his drive to do everything in his power to avoid more fatalities.

I think both can be true at once. Nicholas was already an amazing police officer that tried to make ethical decisions, and he obviously wasn’t trigger happy if we use the idea that he only ever killed one person. He also wasn’t trigger happy even if he killed multiple people in the armed forces unit, because he was a good officer that actually cared. The traumatic incident didn’t change his views, he already was against shooting people unnecessarily (obviously), it just pushed them to the extreme. I think that, maybe, if he’d never killed somebody before, Nicholas would’ve had less of an issue shooting people directly in the finale. He wouldn’t have shot everybody on sight just because they were shooting at him, he still would have done everything he could to avoid it, but he wouldn’t have put his life at risk as much as he did.

In simple terms, without his trauma he would have caused more deaths, but that doesn’t mean that his trauma gave him decent morals around guns and causing fatalities. He already had brilliant ethics beforehand, and his trauma pushed them to a ridiculous degree. Without his trauma, his ethics would have remained the same, and he would have defended himself using his weapons more directly, because he was being actively shot at and that’s the sensible thing to do. That doesn’t mean he would be okay with shooting people, it just means that he would have reacted like a normal person being shot at. He would have used his guns to injure and prevent further harm. With his trauma he puts himself at an incredible risk in an effort to avoid using his firearms.

When he was being shot at from the window, I think he would have shot back instead of sending the school children into the shop. His trauma kept him from shooting, even if he was almost completely defenceless and in the direct line of fire. He could have shot Roper in the arm just to keep her from shooting him, a sensible and non-fatal decision, but instead he stayed directly in front of her gun, relying on the Hoodies to restrain her. I think that’s clear evidence that the Kalashnikov incident left a permanent scar on his psyche.

Additionally, when Nicholas is asked if he wants to go for a shoot, referencing hunting even if the foreshadowing is awesome, he says “I haven’t held a firearm for over two years Mr. Reaper and I’m more than happy to keep it that way.” This doesn’t really give us anything else to analyse, but I thought it was important to mention. It’s the first time we hear of his refusal to hold a firearm, and we can immediately assume it’s linked to the Kalashnikov incident.

Oh, it’s also important to note that maybe Nicholas’ seriousness surrounding violence could also be because he’s seen it firsthand and it scarred him. His disgust at how Danny approaches violence could be a result of not just his experiences with it, but the lasting impact those experiences had on him. He obviously believes Danny to be incredibly naive, and the look on his face when Danny makes a comment about shooting somebody says enough. His reaction to “Is it true if you shot a man in a particular spot on the head, you can make it blow up?” in the scene where he’s talking to the school children, and his reaction to Danny’s flip book animation in the car, says everything you need to know.

Nicholas is almost disgusted (“unclean”), his defences rising in the form of stern words and procedure any time somebody makes light of the subject. He immediately gets blunt and serious any time violence and guns are mentioned, a mechanism to shield himself from his guilt. The particular decision to make Danny’s flip book animation a police officer shooting somebody clearly stood out to me as well, and it’s very obvious that it was a conscious decision to make Nicholas’ aversion to guns a clear motif. Maybe this was the make the scene at the end more impactful?

I believe that Edgar Wright intended to imply that Nicholas had some sort of issue around guns relating to that incident, but I don’t think he was directly trying to imply that Nicholas had trauma. It’s important we outline that difference, because Nicholas could have issues surrounding firearms without being traumatised. Personally I think that he does have some form of trauma from it. Maybe he still gets nightmares from the incident, and I mentioned earlier that his view of himself may have changed, believing himself to be a natural killer. He also feels “unclean” when he holds a gun, like he still feels the sticky blood on his hands, like he’s having some kind of flashback or strong memory that causes his skin to crawl. This is a strong indicator of trauma and guilt.

In conclusion, Nicholas Angel has trauma from guns. Whether it was because he shot one person or multiple, he has trauma, and his opinions around guns and his actions in the finale aren’t solely due to his morals. I’m not diagnosing him with anything, but it’s also likely he has some kind of condition like PTSD from that trauma. Then again, I don’t know enough about conditions derived from trauma to say that.

I’m surprised I haven’t seen more angst fanfics about it. People write about the trauma of the big shoot out at the end, that’s an obvious choice if you want to write angst, but nobody really mentions the things that Nicholas went through in London. I need more fics exploring his extreme opinions around guns (I don’t believe his “no fatalities unless strictly necessary” views are extreme, I’m talking about his refusal to cause any injury with a firearm even if it costs him his own life) and the lasting damage the act of taking a life had on his mental state.

Off topic again, but in the script it says Nicholas should be chewing gum instead of a toothpick in the start of part 4. “ANGEL scowls back at him, chewing gum, armed to the teeth.” So that’s neat. I think the toothpick works better to make him look cooler, but the gum would have been harder to clean up from the ground. Maybe it’s because a toothpick is biodegradable, and Nicholas isn’t a monster. He’s environmentally conscious even in these circumstances, lmao.