Main cast: Jamie Foxx (Bud Jablonski), Dave Franco (Seth), Natasha Liu Bordizzo (Heather), Meagan Good (Jocelyn Jablonski), Karla Souza (Audrey San Fernando), Steve Howey (Mike Nazarian), Scott Adkins (Diran Nazarian), Oliver Masucci (Klaus), Snoop Dogg (Big John Elliott), Eric Lange (Ralph Seeger), Peter Stormare (Troy), and Zion Broadnax (Paige Jablonski)
Director: JJ Perry
In Day Shift, we meet Bud Jablonski, vampire hunter, and even vampire hunters get the blues. That’s right, his ex-wife Jocelyn is moving out of LA to Florida, and she’s taking their daughter Paige with her.
She’s not doing this to be mean. It’s just that she doesn’t know what Bud does (that’s right, he thinks he is Batman or something), and because he doesn’t reply to calls and emails, he picks up their daughter late or just doesn’t show up altogether, and oh yes, their daughter’s tuition fee is due in seven days and Bud completely misses it because he doesn’t read the stuff she sends him. Frustrated, she decides that she’d accept her mom’s offer to take her and Paige in.
Bud doesn’t want them to go, so now he needs to find ten grand for Paige to get a pair of bracers as well as to pay her expensive school fees. The clock is ticking…
He has been kicked out of the vampire hunter union in the past for being too bad-ass to follow the rules, and this is a problem because he’s forced to try to pawn off the fangs of his targets, and there’s not much money in it that way. Getting back into the union is the only way, and to be in the good graces of the union, he has to suffer the indignity of having the union rep Seth tail him on his hunts, the latter assigned to take note of any excuse to get him expelled again.
The reason this movie is called what it is is because the union boss isn’t keen on taking Bud back, and while Bud is under his one-week probation and tailed by Seth, Bud is getting the day shift gigs, which also pay far less than the night shift ones.
If that’s not enough, Bud’s vampire-staking party is crashed by the vampire boss Audrey San Fernando, who is super mad that Bud killed a “daughter” of hers earlier. Audrey also wants to take over the world and rule over humans. The vampires here don’t need to do that sleep in coffin thing during the day; they just need to avoid having their skin under direct contact with sunlight. Audrey has come up with something that will let the vampires move even more freely in daylight, ooh.
Hence, not only is Bud’s personal happiness at, er, stake, so is the fate of the world!
Predictably enough, Audrey takes his ex-wife and his daughter hostage. Hands up, people that don’t see that coming, so that I can swat you all for being so oblivious.
Despite the presence of vampires, this movie is more of a stylish action flick as everyone from vampire hunters to vampires seem to know how to do martial arts-ish kicks and punches when they are not plying on the gun-fu.
Make no mistake, though, there is some gore, but there’s also lots more stylish violence. Sadly, most of the fun stuff is scattered between the first third and the late third of the movie, making the middle third more of a tired buddy cop movie thing as Bud and Seth try to reconcile their differences in… well, everything to be some kind of functional team. Sure, that part isn’t bad, but it’s also a rather hokey, clichéd series of scenes that feel rather boring compared to the other parts of the movie.
What’s also interesting is that Bud is not a perfect action hero, oh far from it. Many other secondary characters kick bad people’s ass far better than he, and he takes a lot, and I do mean a lot of beating compared to those characters. Often he has to utilize his environment or get assistance from allies to help him win.
I personally find this refreshing, as these days there are way too many “perfect from the beginning” heroes and heroines running around. That gets boring fast, as such characters are rarely interesting due to how they don’t have to undergo a protagonist journey. On the other hand, Bud’s plucky underdog status allows for some quaintly old school “at the face of defeat, our hero suddenly finds the resolution and the means to snatch victory as the audience applaud” turnarounds that never fails to get the adrenaline going.
I also have to say, the action hero phase of Jamie Foxx’s career is making me look at him in a new light. He’s aging like fine wine, probably tastes just as good too, and it’s so nice to look at him. Hmm, now that Blade is the property of Disney and they will no doubt ruin that character somehow, maybe we can have a new vampire franchise featuring this fine man as the lead. How about it, Netflix?
Dave Franco is kind of annoying in his role, but it’s not too bad as Seth’s melodramatic naïveté lends to some nice counterpoint to Bud’s more aggressive “shoot first, maybe talk later” approach. I will always wish Snoop Dogg’s character has been Bud’s full time partner instead, as that character is far more adorable and interesting than Seth, heh.
In the end, Day Shift has a lot of that feel of being a first movie in a planned franchise. There are some characters that show up, do their thing, and then go off, strongly suggesting that they are potential allies and sidekicks of Bud should he get a few more sequels under his belt. The world building is far more interesting than the actual plot or the villain, although I have to say that Audrey is a pretty intriguing villain in a Satanico Pandemonium way—intriguing, but sadly never really developed into anything better.
Still, I’ve had a lot of fun with the violence, the blood, and hot Jamie Foxx getting all action hero-y and beaten down in many sexy ways. This movie is far more entertaining than most of the stuff I found on Netflix lately, so three cheers and two thumbs up for that!
