Well, we’ve taken a look at David Leitch’s efforts this year, between directing Bullet Train and producing Violent Night; let's see what the other half of 87Eleven has been up to. And it seems that Chad Stahelski’s giving another stuntman his turn in the director’s chair, bringing J. J. Perry out of a several-year hiatus to helm this action-comedy about vampire hunting in sunny California. And I gotta be honest, I think I like this more than Violent Night.
Coming co-written by Shay Hatten, who helped make Army Of The Dead and Army Of Thieves last year, the approach to world-building here is very exposition-heavy. A lot of it comes from Dave Franco’s Seth, a bookish and weak-bladdered worker for the vampire hunter’s Union that is assigned to supervise Jamie Foxx’s Bud, who has recently been reinstated into the Union. Over a couple conversations, he just rattles off a bunch of stats and lore about the different types of vampires in this world, their hunting patterns, their hierarchies, etc. Unnatural? Oh, absolutely, but I still like the attention put into those details. Ditto for the economy of this world, where vampire teeth are the main loot of the trade, and any excuse to bring Peter Stormare into a film is worthwhile.
It also helps that the action scenes are fucking glorious. The opening fight between Bud and a contortionist Spider vampire is a dizzying combination of back-bending acrobatics, Toby Oliver’s whirling cinematography, and Samaritan-sized heavy hits courtesy of stunt coordinator Justin Yu. It establishes an ideal tone for the fight scenes to come, and they are all quite entertaining. Kudos are also due to when Bud teams up with Steve Howey and Scott Adkins as the Nazarian brothers, who show some of the most ridiculously cool teamwork I’ve ever seen in an action flick. J. J. Perry has experience with vampire throwdowns from working on Underworld: Awakening (the best of those films), and he puts it to good use here.
The Cali atmosphere of the whole thing is quite appealing as well. Between the titular Day Shift and main villain Audrey (Karla Souza)’s plans to modernise the vampire lifestyle, I like the way it makes this kind of sunkissed colour palette work for a film about night creatures. The soundtrack adds to that too, with a lot of West Coast representation from Ice Cube, Body Count, Paris, and Nipsey Hussle, and Snoop Dogg himself shows up as a Union veteran. How exactly am I supposed to reject a film where Jamie Foxx and Snoop Dogg team up to fight vampires?
As for the specific reason why I consider this better than Violent Night, as fun as that film was, it all comes down to a matter of intentions. Violent Night was high-concept all the way, but it kept gesturing at things it seemingly wanted to get into thematically, never managing to really do them justice. Whereas this film is a lot more straight-forward. There’s some stuff to do with looking out for one’s family, but ultimately, it’s all about the aesthetic and the action beats, both of which work really damn well together. It does exactly what it sets out to do, making for just the right kind of one-and-done action flick.
No comments:
Post a Comment