Time: 117 Minutes
Age Rating:
Cast
Will Smith as Daryl Ward
Joel Edgerton as Nick Jakoby
Noomi Rapace as Leilah
Lucy Fry as Tikka
Édgar Ramírez as Kandomere
Ike Barinholtz as Pollard
Director: David Ayer

In an alternate present day, humans, orcs, elves and fairies have been coexisting since the beginning of time. Two police officers, one a human (Will Smith), the other an orc (Joel Edgerton), embark on a routine night patrol that will alter the future of their world as they know it. Battling both their own personal differences as well as an onslaught of enemies, they must work together to protect a young female elf (Lucy Fry) and a thought-to-be-forgotten relic, which, in the wrong hands, could destroy everything.

I heard about Bright for a while leading up to its Netflix release. I like David Ayer as a director, and I like Will Smith and Joel Edgerton, however one thing that caused me to become sceptical about Bright being any good was Max Landis. It has received a lot of hate upon its release and after seeing it, I have to say that it is far from being the worst movie of 2017, but it definitely has a lot of problems. While there are some good parts to it, there is a lot of mixed aspects to it.

David Ayer hasn’t had a good track record with scripts lately. Sabotage was written by Skip Woods (who wrote Max Payne, A Good Day to Die Hard and X-Men Origins Wolverine) and Suicide Squad was written by Ayer himself, and although he can write some good movies (Training Day) he had only 6 weeks to do it. Now with Bright, Max Landis is writing, Landis is not a very good writer and surprise surprise, the script to Bright is not very good. I know that Ayer rewrote some of it but again, he had 6 weeks to write Suicide Squad and that didn’t turn out so well. Bright has some attempt to add some racial social commentary, the problem is that it is very heavy handed that its laughable at time. In fact, one of the biggest problems is that the film isn’t subtle at all. I also feel like it takes itself way too seriously, if it went more insane and over the top it might’ve worked better in a weird way. I’m not saying that it would only work if its over the top, I’m saying this because a lot of the moments when it tries to be serious and impactful, it really doesn’t leave the impression that it’s trying to have. The closest it comes is when it deals with Joel Edgerton’s character, I liked what happened with him. I was reasonably invested throughout the whole movie, flaws aside I found it to be just okay, however the third act was underwhelming. Not everything is sub par, I like the world that they have created, combining mankind with orcs, elves and fairies. The blending of fantasy element to the real world actually worked well. There’s definitely potential for a good Max-Landis-free sequel to Bright. It’s going to need a much better writer however.

Will Smith and Joel Edgerton are the leads and they had great chemistry. Some of the banter dialogue between the two doesn’t always work and can feel forced at times but the actors do what they can and they do enough to make a real impression. Edgerton in particularly is a highlight, being one of the best parts about the whole film. Nobody in the supporting cast really gets to stand out, they are okay but don’t leave a real impression. Noomi Rapace is the villain and she was okay but was completely wasted. All she did was villainous things and lacked a lot of character depth, she’s not even in the movie that much. Smith and Egerton are definitely the standouts among the cast.

David Ayer does direct this movie well for the most part. The action sequences are well filmed and were quite entertaining. The makeup is very impressive especially with the orcs, they all look great. Even the visual effects are quite good for a Netflix movie. The use of music wasn’t always the best, like Suicide Squad, Bright would often have scenes that would randomly switch between modern day songs and it would feel very out of place and unneeded.

A lot of people are wondering one thing: is Bright better than Suicide Squad? As someone who now finds SS to be a guilty pleasure, I’d say yes, but not by a huge amount. Bright is not that good of a movie but I wouldn’t call it bad either. It has an interesting world with its fantasy genre blending, Smith and Edgerton play well off each other and Ayer’s direction is solid overall. As repetitive as this criticism is, I gotta say it, Max Landis’s script is really what really holds it back from being good. Nothing is subtle and not as well executed as it should have been. Apparently, a sequel is already in the works and thankfully Max Landis is not involved. As long as they get someone else much better to write the script, I’m on board with it. It definitely has some potential.