Bright review: Mixture of Lord of the Rings and Training Day goes awry

Photo: Matt Kennedy, Bright/via Netflix Media Center

David Ayer’s Bright is a fantastical take on the buddy-cop genre. However, Max Landis’ erratic script doesn’t allow the movie to reach its potential.

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After being inaugurated by Akira Kursowa’s Stray Dog, buddy cop movies were the go-to setup for comedy movies till the ’90s. While the genre might’ve produced classics like Lethal Weapon, Hot Fuzz and Training Day, it has witnessed a steady decline over the years. That’s why, being a fan of buddy cop movies himself, David Ayer has returned with Bright, starring Will Smith, Noomi Rapace and Joel Edgerton.

Set in an alternate Los Angeles, Bright‘s universe is an amalgamation of humans, orcs, elves and fairies. While that might sound like the perfect recipe for a kids’ story, Ayer paints a darker picture where each of these sects are divided due to their shared history; thereby mirroring real life racial discrimination. Although this can be considered as a bold spin on the sub-genre, how well does the movie pull it off?

The film begins with a literal bang as the film’s protagonist, Ward (Will Smith) is shot in the chest by an Orc robber before he or his Orc partner, Jakoby (Joel Edgerton) could take any kind of action. When Ward recuperates and rejoins the force, Bright establishes one of the movie’s primary conflicts: the hatred towards Jakoby for being the only Orc LAPD officer. Although the reason for this divide is pretty vague, Ayer makes it clear that the Orcs lie at the bottom of the social ladder, Humans in the middle and Elves at the top.

As the movie approached the 30-minute mark, the sociopolitical message on racism, corruption and police brutality was very apparent. In addition to that, Ayer was doing a marvelous job of balancing the realism and fantastical nature of the story through his central characters. However, this is where Max Landis’ (Chronicle, American Ultra) script kicks in and sends everyone on a repetitive goose-chase which revolves around a magic wand and bad blood between Elves.

Photo: Scott Garfield, Bright/via Netflix Press Center

One of the major problems of Bright is that it’s constantly self-contradictory. It establishes itself as a commentary on racism and social hierarchy, but digresses into a tiring fight for an obscure MacGuffin (the wand). Then, it introduces the movie’s central antagonist as Noomi Rapace’s Leilah, but forgets about her for a major chunk of the run-time as it keeps shifting between gangs of Orcs, Humans and some guys from the Magic Task Force.

The movie does shine in spurts, thanks to Ayer’s expertise in gritty crime-dramas (End of Watch, Sabotage and Harsh Times), like the stylized panning shot of Will Smith firing at someone off-screen, from the trailer. However, the lack of proper character motivation leads to the absence of emotional investment, thereby making those moments barely memorable. For a movie that hints at a lot of mythology and lore, Bright takes itself way too seriously and robs itself of the chance to truly go crazy with its concept, which definitely must have sounded great on paper.

Photo: Matt Kennedy, Bright/via Netflix Media Center

Although the script and dialogue has nothing to offer, Will Smith does a commendable job of playing a cop who is trying to make his way through the mess and madness. In addition to that, Smith plays off Edgerton’s Jakoby very well, even though he’s barely recognizable under tons of Orc make-up. The rest of the cast, especially Rapace, Edgar Ramirez and Mindhunter‘s Happy Anderson, are absolutely wasted. As the movie never tries to make sense of how its universe functions, their interactions end up sounding puzzling or just plain gibberish.

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Despite a run-time of about 2 hours, Bright neither reaches the fantastical heights of its strange universe, nor does it pull off the simple premise of buddy cop movies. It fails to make its characters likable and manages to make action-sequences look boring. In addition to that, as the movie includes a scene where the central characters describe the plot of the movie, I’ll advise you to skip to that part instead of going through the entire mind-numbing ordeal.

Rating: 2/10

Bright is out on Netflix now.

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