“Day Shift,” a new action comedy starring Jamie Foxx, and now streaming on Netflix, brings a supernatural twist to the familiar story of a father doing what he has to do to hang on to his family.
Foxx plays Bud, a San Fernando Valley pool cleaner and undercover vampire slayer. A fearless hunter of the undead while on the job, at home he’s a devoted father, but things aren’t going well. He and his wife Joceyln (Meagan Good) have separated, and unless Bud can come up with $5000 to pay for private school tuition for daughter Paige (Zion Broadnax), mother and daughter are going to move to Florida.
Neither the pool cleaning or freelance vampire killing pay what they used to, and when a local pawnbroker (Peter Stormare) offers him a fraction of what his trophy vampire fangs are worth, he is left with only one option, join the vampire-hunter’s union.
Trouble is, they don’t want him. “You expect me to let you back in where the sun don’t shine?” asks union leader Ralph Seeger (Eric Lange). He’s a rebel, he doesn’t follow the rules, he’s a wild card but when legendary vamp killer Big John Elliott (Snoop Dogg) vouches for him, Bud gets in, but the union has him on probation and his every move will be monitored by straightlaced union rep Seth (Dave Franco). “I have to be with you at all times in the field,” Seth says. “Union rules.”
Bud can now earn the money he needs to keep his family together, unless elder vampire Audrey San Fernando (Karla Souza) gets her bloody revenge on him for killing her undead daughter.
“Day Shift” is an action comedy with an emphasis on bloody action. Between the decapitations, martial arts fight sequences, wooden stakings and Snoop’s Big Bertha rapid fire machine gun, this one has a much higher body count than your usual laugh fest. Foxx does his best to bleed the laughs out of the script. He’s a convincing action star, a kind of jokey Blade, who also has a way with a one-liner. His presence adds some much-needed lightness and his chemistry with Franco makes the character of Seth a tad less irksome.
“Day Shift” suffers from an underwritten script and overwrought plot turns, but despite all that, the action, Foxx and Snoop makes for a pretty good Saturday matinee style horror comedy à la “Monster Squad” or “Fright Night.”
“Army of Thieves,” a new heist film now streaming on Netflix, is a prequel to Zack Snyder’s “Army of the Dead” from earlier this year but do not expect the same kind of blood and guts zombiefied action.
The new film takes place six years before the zombie outbreak that brought Las Vegas to its knees in “Army of the Dead.” Both are heist movies, but the only brain eaters on display in this European-set flick are on the news and in the main character, Ludwig Dieter’s (Matthias Schweighöfer, who also directs) dreams. This is a standalone movie, the origin story of the safecracker who provided most of the lighter moments in Snyder’s film.
When we first meet Ludwig he’s a safecracker nerd, making YouTube video (that nobody watches) about the art of breaking into safes. He’s a skilled practitioner of the craft, but he’s an innocent and has never stolen anything from anyone. His job at a bank is unsatisfying in the extreme, so when a YouTube commenter invites him a safecracking competition, he readily accepts.
There, he proves his mettle and is recruited by bank robber Gwendoline (Nathalie Emmanuel) to join her gang of criminals, Korina (Ruby O. Fee), hacker Rolph (Guz Khan) and the muscle with the action hero name, Brad Cage (Stuart Martin). The gang has ambitious plans to rob three next-to-impossible safes, the kind that only Ludwig can crack, while the zombie outbreak in the United States is causing instability.
But what will bring the gang down first, zombies, sexual tension, Interpol or in-fighting?
The only real connection “Army of Thieves” has with “Army of the Dead” is Ludwig. It’s his introduction to the Snyderverse and dovetails into the zombie movie. Other than that, they are two separate things.
This one has a lighter touch, there’s some romance and no brain eating.
It plays like a riff on “Ocean’s Eleven.” At two hours it feels slightly long but Schweighöfer is an agreeable presence, adept at the character’s slapstick as well as the conveying the passion for his love interest (no spoilers here!). The result is an unexpectedly fun, action-packed movie gives new life to “Army of the Dead’s” most interesting character.
Richard Crouse makes a Corpse Reviver Number 2, the perfect cocktail to enjoy while having a drink and a think about “Army of the Dead,” the new zombie movie from director Zach Snyder.
Richard joins Ryan Doyle and Jay Michaels of the NewsTalk 1010 afternoon show to talk about the history of the Screwdriver cocktail. Not just for brunch, it actually dates back to Turkey in the 1940s. We have a look at the Netflix zombie-palooza “Army of the Dead,” and ask out loud the question that everyone is thinking: Why can movie theatres be safely opened in Quebec, but not Ontario.
Cast your mind back to 2014. John Wick, the retired super assassin played by Keanu Reeves, was attempting to move on after the death of his wife. Keeping him company was a puppy, sent by his wife just before she died in the hopes that the dog’s love will help ease his pain. But then came the bad men who broke into his house to steal his super nifty 1970 Mustang. Things go sideways and the thieves do the unspeakable.
They kill the dog.
Big mistake. The doggy’s daddy is a killing machine. How wicked is John Wick? “Is he the boogeyman?” asks one former associate. “He was the one we sent to kill the boogeyman.”
Thus, was set into motion the series of bloody, open-up-a-can-of-whoop-ass events that lead us to “John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum.”
Following “Chapter 2” which saw Wick ostracized from the exclusive world of killers-for-hire after breaking some very Old Testament style rules laid down by Winston (Ian McShane), operator of the mysterious assassin association the High Table. Now Wick has a $14 million price tag on his head and an army of international bounty-hunters on his tail.
You don’t go to “John Wick” movies for nuanced character development. You go for the kick butt-ery. “Chapter 3” delivers on the promise of action with scenes that show Wick dispatching a man using nothing but a book, stabbing somebody in the eye – that one is gruesome – and, of course shooting everyone in sight. There is so much and gunplay it’s as if they had to use up all of “Chapter 3’s” bullet budget or they wouldn’t get it again for the inevitable sequel.
These action scenes are carefully choreographed and the absence of music in the early fights emphasizes the brutality and the absurdity of the violence. But while we expect uber-violence from this franchise, we also expect consistently inventive battle scenes. There’s some of that—the action scenes involving horses and motorcycles are wild and woolly—but a long shoot-out in Casablanca is just that – a long shoot-out in Casablanca that feels plucked from a video game.
As the series moves further away from the original “dead puppy“ revenge plot of the original it is losing some of the simplicity that made the first two movies so enjoyable. The world of the High Table comes with rules of plenty but in the context of these action films less could be more. We don’t need complicated world building. This isn’t a Marvel movie, it’s a fists of fury action flick that threatens to get bogged down by details.
Having said that, “Chapter Three – Parabellum” (a Latin phrase meaning ‘prepare for war’) is still a hoot and features some of the coolest fight scenes in movies right now despite its excesses.
