Pretending to be a freelance pool cleaner, Bud Jablonski (Jamie Foxx) is actually a freelance vampire hunter, selling the teeth of the undead for profit (and no, the film never explains how this system actually works, or who is buying the stuff). He once was a union vampire hunter but was thrown out of the organization for irresponsible behaviour.
Because our hero is just that kind of a guy, he’s also separated from his family, not for lack of love but because he’s irresponsible and uses his work as an excuse for his absenteeism. Though I am not too sure the film actually understands this. Also, he never had the vampire talk with his wife Jocelyn (Meagan Good) and little daughter Paige (Zion Broadnax). Right now, Jocely threatens to move away unless Bud can come up with enough money for Paige’s school tuition and braces. Apparently, you only learn you have to pay five thousand dollars tuition a week before they come due.
Clearly, the only way to solve these problems is to get back into the vampire hunter’s union, which Bud manages with the help of mythical vampire hunter Big John Elliott (Snoop Dogg, who is pretty awesome in this one). Of course, the union boss hates Bud and insists on desk jock Seth (Dave Franco) accompanying and watching him.
Which becomes particularly difficult because Bud has killed the actual daughter of budding master vampire Audrey (Karla Souza), who does not take well to this sort of thing.
From moment to moment, there’s fun to be had in the series of unthinkingly deployed clichés director J.J. Perry calls a movie. You can certainly see the extensive experience Perry has with stunt work, and get quite a few good to great action set pieces (which is more than you can say about the clearly much more costly The Gray Man which also comes to us via Netflix like this one), as if someone had thrown a bit of money to a direct to video action movie. Which at the very least keeps the film from ever becoming boring. In fact, once the triple action sequence climax starts, things become downright entertaining to watch, with well choreographed action filmed with vigour and without permanent cutting away.
All of which would make for a pretty awesome piece of horror comedy action cinema if not for a terrible script that can only ever think of anything as a set-up of a joke but doesn’t understand that your world building can only be a decent basis for jokes when it actually hangs together. That doesn’t mean it can’t be absurd – see something like the Men in Black films for how to do it right – but once your world only seems to be the set-up for jokes, those jokes should at the very least be pretty good. Day Shift believes a guy repeatedly pissing himself when he encounters vampires to be the epitome of humour, and so has its problems distracting from the fact that its world makes little sense, its characters are buddy cop movie clichés without any changes made to them and certainly no development, and that its plot can’t seem to focus for a second. How shoddy is the plotting? The film plays the old “the bad guy blackmailed this pretty woman to get close to our hero” card with a character Bud has met exactly one time before her “betrayal”.
Particularly painful is the late movie revelation that vampires in this world don’t actually have to murder people and still keep free will and their old personalities. Which, if you – unlike writers Tyler Tice and Shay Hatten – think about it for a second, means Bud is randomly murdering potentially innocent people for their teeth for a living.
Yet, there are still these very fun fights (including a cameo by house favourite Scott Adkins) keeping Day Shift generally watchable and entertaining.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment