Day Shift: Well-done stake

Day Shift (2022) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for strong violence, gore and profanity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.19.22

This is the sort of film that would have scandalized your parents, had they caught you watching it as a kid.

 

Actually, more than a few adults likely would be similarly horrified, were they to dial it up by mistake.

 

When the vampire-hunting Bud (Jamie Foxx, right) is saddled with Seth (Dave Franco),
a nerdish, pencil-pushing babysitter, the latter is warned to stay the heck out of the way.
What could possibly go wrong?

The rest of us will have a grand time.

Director J.J. Perry’s kick-ass horror comedy won’t be more than a gory footnote in cinema history, but it boasts momentum, a sassy script by Tyler Tice and Shay Hatten, and a richly entertaining performance by star Jamie Foxx. It’s fun to see him return to his comedy roots, although this isn’t actually a comedic performance; the humor derives from the way Foxx plays this material straight, with deadpan sincerity, even as everything around him slides into cheerfully gruesome lunacy.

 

Matters begin innocuously, as San Fernando Valley pool cleaner Bud Jablonski (Foxx) arrives at the home of his latest client. Ah, but Bud isn’t your average pool cleaner. Trays of chemicals are a cover for somewhat more lethal tools, as he quietly slides inside this homeowner’s residence.

 

And the apparently terrified little old lady within isn’t nearly as helpless or frail as she seems.

 

Let us pause, for a moment, to acknowledge that this isn’t an old-school vampire movie, wherein the fanged nasties can be dispatched with a simple wooden stake through the heart. No, Tice and Hatten have gone old-school, where legend dictated that decapitation was the only way to truly kill a vampire.

 

Needless to say, make-up designer Christopher Nelson and his massive team are kept quite busy, with what soon follows.

 

Bud’s unusual profession notwithstanding, he’s an ordinary blue-collar guy struggling to make ends meet. The financial situation suddenly grows dire when his estranged wife, Jocelyn (Meagan Good), threatens to move their daughter Paige (Zion Broadnax) to Florida. This isn’t a fit of pique; Bud and Jocelyn’s relationship is prickly but still mutually devoted. She simply can’t get by on what Bud has been providing.

 

Things have indeed been tight, since the headstrong Bud was thrown out of the more lucrative international union of vampire hunters, following numerous code violations. It has been difficult to make ends meet, when his only income has derived from selling fangs to seedy black-market dealers such as Troy (Peter Stormare).

 

Bud begs for just a few more days; he then swallows his pride, enlists the support of his legendary vampire-hunting pal, Big John Elliott (Snoop Dogg), and begs to be reinstated by hard-ass union boss Seeger (Eric Lange).

 

Seeger derives considerable joy from agreeing, with a no-argument stipulation: Bud must be babysat by nerdy union rep Seth (Dave Franco), a desk-bound pencil-pusher who’s finicky enough to note even the slightest transgression.

The Last Stand: Solid comeback vehicle for Schwarzenegger

The Last Stand (2013) • View trailer
3.5 stars. Rating: R, for considerable violence, gore and profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.18.13

The New Year seems to have brought a run of transplanted Westerns.

Last week, the Magnificent Seven template wound up in 1950s Los Angeles, as Gangster Squad. This week, Howard Hawks’ iconic 1959 John Wayne oater, Rio Lobo — which John Carpenter riffed, just as suspensefully, as 1976’s Assault on Precinct 13 — has been transformed into a modern-day mission to stop a notorious Mexican drug kingpin from making it back to the safety of his native country.

When screwball Lewis Dinkum (Johnny Knoxville, being carried) gets pinned down by
gunfire, Frank (Rodrigo Santoro) charges into the thick of battle in a rescue attempt.
Things have gotten out of hand in the sleepy little town of Sommerton Junction, and
they're about to get even worse...

The only thing in his way: the helplessly outnumbered and outgunned citizens in the pokey little border town of Sommerton Junction.

The Last Stand marks the American directorial debut of South Korean director Kim Jee-woon, perhaps known on these shores for A Tale of Two Sisters and his genre-bending Oriental Western, The Good, the Bad, the Weird, which was Korea’s top box-office hit in 2008.

No surprise, then, that Kim would favor us with a variation on a classic American Western known for its blend of suspense, deftly sketched characters and snarky humor (in this case, quite dark at times).

Frankly, Arnold Schwarzenegger couldn’t have selected a better comeback vehicle, at this point in his career. Andrew Knauer’s story — clearly shaped by the earlier Hawks and Carpenter films, with scripting assists from Jeffrey Nachmanoff and George Nolfi — plays to Arnie’s advancing age, while amply demonstrating that movie action heroes never die, they just find more inventive ways to get the job done.

Mind you, this scenario is wholly outlandish and ludicrous, and no laws are broken more than the basic laws of physics. But it’s all in good fun — if unexpectedly gory at times — and you’ll have no trouble embracing Kim’s all-stops-out rhythm.

Events kick off late one evening in Las Vegas, as grim-faced FBI Agent John Bannister (Forest Whitaker) oversees the transfer of drug lord Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega) via a special prisoner convoy. Borrowing a gag from James Bond’s You Only Live Twice, Cortez makes an impressive escape; within minutes, he’s speeding from the scene at 250 miles per hour (!) in a tricked-up Corvette ZR1.

Worse yet, Cortez has a hostage handcuffed in the passenger seat: FBI Agent Ellen Richards (Genesis Rodriguez).