To be upfront:
Before I knew anything about Bright at all, I thought it was a good idea for Netflix to bankroll the movie. They have in the last 5-to-7 years become the new face of entertainment consumption and have given rise to a whole wave of stream-exclusive services and the products that occupy them. Dipping their toe into the feature film end of the pool could only help and after watching the movie, I still feel that way.
But I did watch the movie. And...well.
It's on Netflix if you want it.
Bright is a movie that features fantasy-inspired creatures living amongst humans in our modern day world. Just like in real life, there is a socioeconomic hierarchy that is very tangible. Elves represent the One Percent: the World Runners and holders of wealth. Humans of all races and creeds exist as a standard middle class. Not prospering but not persecuted, either. Persecution is reserved for the Orcs: a race of creatures that aided the Dark Lord in a massive war over 2,000 years ago - they have been shunned for the deed ever since. Oh, and Fairies seem to be mindless animals. Make of that what you will.
In this movie, we follow one human and one Orc. Officer Daryl Ward (Will Smith) is back on the job at LAPD after suffering critical injuries due to the negligence of his partner, Nick Jakoby (Joel Edgerton), who is the nation's first Orc police officer.
Will Smith is just okay with an affected charisma so glaring, one must wonder if rooting for this protagonist would be done so in irony. Not so for Joel Edgerton, who gives his all under a pile of Orc makeup. He's the only character in the movie that doesn't compromise himself and his struggle is the easiest to empathize with. Thankfully so, as development of any kind gets lost under a shower of bullets and F-bombs.
It becomes clear immediately what message the movie is trying to deliver. The Orcs - FUBU jerseys and all - are whatever marginalized minority group you want to plug in. African-Americans and Latinos especially fit the bill. Ward's fellow human officers ask how he could possibly stand having "that pigface" (yeah, really) in his car. Ward says he can't, but that he's making the most of it as a professional.
It was about at this point that I realized this movie takes place in Gotham City. I know our heroes are in the LAPD and the movie points out any time it can that we're in LA, but... This is Gotham, folks. Nevermind that they spend half the film running the streets in gallons of rain (which doesn't happen that often in Southern California) but it seems that every single cop is corrupt to some varying degree. Officer Ward is confronted, in the same day, by two groups: two Internal Affairs officials who want him to illegally tape Jakoby lying about letting the Orc perp who shot him escape, and four beat cops who want Ward to shoot Jakoby at a crime scene and report it as a crossfire shooting.
The crime scene in question occurs at a safehouse where Ward and Jakoby encounter a magic wand and a Bright: a special magic-user capable of absorbing a wand's power with no buffer. Remember in Harry Potter how a wand was merely an outlet for a user's abilities and were treated with barely enough reverence to avoid being used as butt-scratchers? Well, in this world, they are described (via actual words written down) as "a nuclear weapon that grants wishes."
This means, obviously, that everyone wants it: the Cops, the Orcs, the Elves. Even the Cholos, lead by paraplegic gangster, Poison (Enrique Murciano). So, maybe now is a good time to mention that this is a David Ayer production. It was directed by him as well, so it totally makes sense why this movie features a grown man in a wheelchair uttering the phrase, "I need that magic wand, mang!"
Bright was written by Max Landis but it can't exactly be called a Landis script. He certainly wrote the story, and I give him credit for creating a unique concept and mythology. Adjustments could be made but the foundation is solid. You can see what he was going for and these extreme genre melds have become a staple of his writing. It appears however that Landis turned in his copy to Netflix some time ago, wherein the company handed it to Ayer, who promptly rewrote it to suit his Locker Room Talk needs.
Yet again, it's David Ayer up to his old tricks.
Cops - check.
LA - check.
'The Hood' - check.
Latino Gangsters - check.
Crime & Pestilence - double check.
Also evidenced is Ayer's apparent inability to write a female character of any consequence (Harley Quinn aside.) The two ladies playing Ward's wife and daughter (Dawn Olivieri and Scarlet Spencer, respectively) by all accounts seem to be good actors. You couldn't tell, though, as they get maybe five minutes of screen time before they are ushered off stage left. They could have not been in the movie at all; but work is hard to come by, so hopefully it leads to more for them.
Margaret Cho's Squad Sergeant is also ethically compromised and presents Ward with an interesting moral dilemma. But it's a character that can be played by any gender, and she is also gone after five minutes of screen time.
Then, there's Noomi Rapace: a great character actor who is wasted as the Elf Parkour Assassin, Leilah. She serves a hidden master and speaks in exposition, so any potential menace she holds as a villain disappears almost immediately. She and fellow Elf, Tikka (Lucy Fry) were both reduced to tropes in the same year that Wonder Woman destroyed the Summer Box Office.
It was eye-opening to watch this film with an LA native who paused the streaming service repeatedly to point out the several affluent neighborhoods Ayer tried to pass off as South Central and 'Da Barrio.' Ward, who is drowning in debt, lives in a house that is actually worth close to a quarter of a million dollars.
And from a technical standpoint, what a sloppy effort this is. The editing is haphazard at best and utterly lazy at worst, and the sound mix is bad to the point of distraction. A shotgun blast in one frame is overpowered by a line from Ward two seconds later. If Netflix truly wants to break into the big feature market, they have to give a better effort.
I've seen this movie called the worst of 2017. I can tell you that's not true. To do that, Bright would have to be worse than the two movies tied for that distinction: The Emoji Movie and The Snowman. 2018 will no doubt feature films as bad or worse, but for 2017, beating those films in badness is mathematically impossible.
But this movie isn't good. No getting around that. I don't hate it, because it seems like a waste of energy. I only decided to watch it because I was with a friend and we actively tore the movie apart. At the end, while fulfilled, I had no desire to see any portion of the movie a second time. It honestly seems like a film that the Instagram Generation can watch to feel like it 'made them think.'
After seeing the class war in Blade Runner 2049, this felt like an elementary level comprehension and for some people, that'll work fine. It sets up the universe, presents the mythology and, in terms of garnering interest for a follow-up, it succeeded mostly. Many people will eagerly await the continuing adventures of Ward and Jakoby on the mean streets of LA. But I'm not one of them.
This picture gets one extra star for the uncredited makeup team, who did pretty good.
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