Jamie Foxx and Snoop Dogg.

I love a good directorial debut, almost as much as I love a good Jamie Foxx movie. Day Shift is the directorial debut of JJ Perry, who you may know from his stunt work on classics like Wild Wild West, Blade, and the film you think about every day of the week; Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever. He’s also been involved in stunts for Machete Kills and absolute garbage like After Earth where his biggest stunt was to clap at Jaden Smith’s performance like he was a real actor. JJ Perry has an upcoming film about an assassin who puts a hit on himself because he received a terminal diagnosis, and then has to fight for his life when he finds out the diagnosis was incorrect.

Day Shift is an absurd movie; Jamie Fox plays Bud Jablonski. Bud is a vampire hunter who hunts vampires and sells their teeth on the bounty market for cold hard cashola. Who is bankrolling this operation? Stop talking. Bud finds himself in a bit of a pickle when his wife Jocelyn (Meagan Good) announces that because he’s kind of a deadbeat, she needs to move herself and their daughter Paige (Zion Broadnax) to Florida. And Florida sucks, so Bud decides it’s a good time as any to make peace with the vampire hunting union to get himself back on track and make some cold cash.

The union brings Bud on board, provided he has to go around with a union rep watching his every move. That’s in the form of Dave Franco who plays Seth. Seth is a weenie and a dweeb and a pencil-pushing bedwetter who dreams of one day moving up to the better spot at the union. Seeing the opportunity for upward movement, Seth agrees to the job. Ralph Seeger (Eric Lange) really just wants Seth to give him a reason to fire Bud again. Oh and Snoop Dogg is here as Big John, a professional vampire hunter and blunt smoker who is rarely seen not smoking a blunt because it’s Snoop.

The bad lady of the film is Audrey San Fernando (Karla Souza) which sounds like a fake name. Audrey has plans to finally change the scope of the fight against humans. Also Steve Howey and Scott Adkins are in this film as the Nazarian brothers, a duo of professional vampire hunters who whoop some serious ass. Peter Stormare is in the film as a pawn shop owner and Oliver Masucci is here as Klaus, Audrey’s right hand man.

I loved Day Shift, it is an action-comedy move that is as ridiculous as it is stupid. The fight scenes have great choreography, especially when you have a dozen or so people running around in tight spaces just kicking the crap out of each other. There’s body parts chopped off, ripped off, characters get impaled on things, people get stabbed, blown up, contorted into pretzels, and have all kinds of nasty things done to their bodies. And the fights have impact too, you really feel it when Seth gets suplexed into a table. You can tell a career stuntman made this film.

Meanwhile the film is also a buddy movie of sorts between Foxx and Franco, two guys who come from different walks of life who hate each other but eventually learn to enjoy each other’s company after a few near-death experiences. Foxx of course has charm out the wazoo, and Franco does a surprisingly good job of playing the overly nervous desk jockey forced to face real danger for the first time in his life. Audrey Fernando performs fine as a present yet maybe not entirely menacing baddie. Everyone’s great. Especially Snoop, who is just Snoop and that’s all he needs to be.

Franco’s purpose is also to exposit to the audience what the hell is going on in this version of Earth. Again the movie doesn’t go a whole lot into the details of why vampire hunting is big business and who is bankrolling and why they pay varying amounts depending on the class and age of the vampire. But that’s not important, it’s all a vehicle to Bud getting his payday.

My only gripe with the film is that the pacing is a little less than delicious. They could have cut this movie down to an hour and a half and not lost much in the translation. But it doesn’t quite outstay its welcome despite the hard shifts in pacing, and the car chase scene is hilariously insane. The whole film is 114 minutes and gives them plenty of room for a sequel if Foxx kills enough vampires to afford it.

Rating: A-