Bright (2017) [Netflix HD]
Action | Crime | Fantasy | Sci-Fi | Thriller

In an alternate present-day where humans live alongside mystical creatures, human cop Scott Ward and his orc partner head out on a seemingly routine night patrol, only to come upon a dark threat that will change the world and the future.

Storyline: Set in a world where mystical creatures live side by side with humans. A human cop is forced to work with an Orc to find a weapon everyone is prepared to kill for.

Reviewer's Note: Review by Brian Orndorf, December 29, 2017 -- For their first entry into the big-budget tentpole release game, Netflix has turned to director David Ayer to take command of “Bright.” Ayer is a helmer who favors gritty street and war stories, essentially making the same movie over and over with efforts such as “End of Watch,” “Street Kings,” and “Fury.” Last summer, Ayer was handed the keys to a comic book-inspired franchise in “Suicide Squad,” and while profitable, the feature divided audiences, weakening potential for multiple sequels and spin-offs. Now he’s handling “Bright,” which also has big aspirations to feed into additional films (a follow-up is already set), delivering a grim fantasy to viewers for the holiday season. And, once again, Ayer botches the execution, with far too much dependence on old habits to make it through an unsavory blend of the silly and the aggressively ugly. Ayer certainly likes to do that one thing, but after a 12 years of making urban horror shows with shell-shocked characters, perhaps enough is enough. Even with magic in the mix, this is moldy routine.

In an alternate universe Los Angeles, magic has ruled the world for thousands of years, creating a realm where Elves, Orcs, and Humans coexist, but not always peacefully. After being shot by an Orc crook while on duty, cop Daryl (Will Smith) has returned to the streets, reluctantly reengaging with his partner, “diversity hire” Nick (Joel Edgerton), the first Orc police officer. Handling the stress of such a teaming for the benefit of his family, Daryl, remains suspicious about his partner, who’s dealing with an ostracized positon on the force. While on a routine call, the duo comes across Tikka (Lucy Fry), an Elf who’s also a Bright, a special being with the ability to handle a magic wand, which is a powerful device capable of granting wishes and destroying the world. Coming into possession of a wand as they try to protect Tikka, Daryl and Nick become targets themselves as members of magical task force, including Elf enforcer Kandomere (Edgar Ramirez), set out to claim Tikka, while her sister, Leilah (Noomi Rapace), an evil Elf, hopes to acquire the ward for her own nefarious purposes.

World-building is not a priority for Ayer and screenwriter Max Landis (“Victor Frankenstein”), but explanation is. “Bright” immerses itself in a strange but familiar world, showcasing a Los Angeles that’s been divided not by race (at least not completely), but by magical beings, with Humans existing somewhere between Orcs, who are thuggish and trapped in a cycle of poverty, and Elves, who represent the elite. As for fairies, they’re nothing more than pests to be eradicated like common house flies. The production drops the audience into the deep end of this altered state, and not gracefully, as exposition quickly becomes an obsession for the feature, which largely does away with banter and characterization to simply explain everything and anything, reducing “Bright” to clarifying speeches, often between players in the hunt who already know in the information being shared. Landis is clumsy here, laboring to construct an epic inspection of a magical creature class system, but he spends so much time laying track, he neglects to drive the train, keeping the picture inert as it details the mystery of magic wands and the pressures in Daryl’s turbulent life.

“Bright” is a buddy cop movie, and one that’s litigiously similar to 1988’s “Alien Nation,” which also featured a reluctant pairing between a crusty cop and an otherworldly being who faced condemnation from outsiders. However, Landis is thinking big with his script, endeavoring to generate a possible franchise as the chase for the wand begins, inspiring treacherous behavior from Daryl’s fellow cops, putting the family man in a difficult position of loyalty to Nick as they figure the situation out. The wand is a deadly weapon, only to be handled by a Bright, and while it’s an interesting focal point for the story, Ayer doesn’t provide an adventure to celebrate the enigmas presented, he creates chaos -- his habitual directorial state.

Ayer loves his messy shootouts and sloppy car chases, keeping “Bright” unsteady as Nick and Daryl try to cross town with Tikka, encountering the wrath of Leilah, the threat of Kandomere, and the common menace of L.A. gangbangers (Ayer’s obsession with urban criminality remains in full effect here). Escalation is replaced with banal violence, while ugliness is always a priority to the production, which attempts to be forbidding, bloody, and R-rated, but also includes tiresome Smith-ian quips, with the actor basically playing himself for the umpteenth time in his career. Smith isn’t funny or sharp, and his obvious improvisations only emphasize the uncomfortable, completely ineffective combination of humor and horror that makes “Bright” particularly laborious to sit through.

Nick and Daryl creep into the bowels of the magic realm, with the script teasing the resurrection of a dark lord who will presumably feature more prominently in the next movie. With the effort locked in a draining routine where it breathlessly identifies everything that passes in front of it, the picture doesn’t have room to breathe, making such additions as a God-like enemy feel more like a threat to the audience than a natural stage for a sequel. Ayer doesn’t show command of “Bright,” detailing Landis’s copy-and-paste imagination with the same old grit and procedural grind he’s been massaging for over a decade of direction, leaning on clichés to survive material that’s straining to be the most original vision of the year.

[CSW] -2.2- Bright?- not really! A confusing and meaningless mish-mash of Alien Nation and Lord of the Rings. The plot is weak, almost to the point of being irrelevant. A quality cast just couldn't save this one. The characters weren't the least bit engaging. The story was quite muddled what little there was of it. Unhappily it is just an ugly looking movie.
[Netflix HD]

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