Bright (2017), directed by David Ayer
I should have watched this far sooner, because now my review of Bright is no longer topical and I'm probably preaching to the choir. I knew this wasn't going to be good when I saw that Max Landis wrote Bright and Ayer directed it, but I decided I was eventually going to watch this. It was never my intention to wait so long, but this concept was stupid and I wasn't exactly looking forward to it. I decided to pound my way through a Netflix backlog some time ago, and this has finally brought me to Bright...and I probably should have watched this with other people but I no longer wished to wait. I cannot believe this was made, but at the same time I also mean that in a positive way. Whether you like the film or not, and almost everyone doesn't, this is an original concept. We need more films that boast original concepts. I don't expect everyone to agree with me and that's alright, but what I thought was that Bright was the right kind of bad. This isn't a boring film at all, take that for what it's worth. There are elements of the film that are really bad, there are some that are okay. What I thought once this was over were two things. This is nowhere near the worst film of 2017. The second was that this could have been good had the concept been taken in a drastically different direction.
Bright is set in an alternate universe where Los Angeles exists as some kind of dystopian hellscape, run down and looking entirely like shit. Humans co-exist with other races, some of which are never explored, but I spotted centaurs, humans, orcs, elves, fairies, and dragons. If there was anything else, I didn't notice it. Anyway, in this version of Los Angeles, Daryl Ward (Will Smith) is a LAPD officer who has been forced to partner with the nation's first orc officer, Nick Jakoby (Joel Edgerton). The way the film presents it, this world has a racist structure and in effect the portrayal of these things is also racist due to stereotyping. The orcs are on the bottom of the pyramid, humans are in the middle, and elves are on the top. Fairies are like flies that need to be gotten rid of. At the start of the film, we see footage of Ward being shot by an orc who was coming out of a store after robbing it. Ward did survive, but everyone in the department blames Jakoby, and everyone hates the idea that Jakoby is part of the police force. There are no exceptions to this. Our early scenes show the way things are, how the city works, how the elves are the rich class of people, and a little bit of history is thrown in there too. There was apparently something called the Dark Lord, all the races besides the orcs (who supported the Dark Lord) had to unite to kill it, and as a result that means magic exists too. Anyway, while on a call, Ward and Jakoby encounter a crazy guy ranting and raving about the Dark Lord. This is the way I wish the film would have continued, or I would rather have seen them investigate a series of cases dealing with the relationship between the three feature races.
Instead of what I wanted, I got something I laughed a lot at but didn't want. Before that, one thing is made clear by Internal Affairs. They believe Jakoby let the orc escape after shooting Ward due to racial politics. They want Ward to record Jakoby admitting that he let the perp escape. Afterwards, they respond to a disturbance at a safe house for an extremist group called the Shield of Light, but it isn't like the officers knew beforehand. After a shootout, they go inside and see a magical being fused with a wall, an elf girl named Tikka (Lucy Fry), and a magic wand. Magic wands are how magic enters the world, but they are very rare and only people called Brights are able to touch them without killing themselves. When Ward calls for backup because they've found a wand, the four arriving officers, led by Pollard (Ike Barinholtz) and Ching (Margaret Cho), they want to take the wand and sell it or use it for their needs. They want Ward to kill Jakoby, which leads to Ward demanding the truth. Things get way out of hand from there, and there are all sorts of gangsters in that neighborhood. You think there's just human gangs kicking around? I think not. In any case, with a wand in play, there comes some interesting people along with. Kandomere (Edgar Ramirez) is an elvish federal agent who investigates these kinds of things, and he has a human partner, Hildebrandt (Happy Anderson). Are some of these names taking the piss or what? Anyway, if you find a wand anywhere, that's who you're supposed to call. Poison (Enrique Murciano) is a leader of a human gang, he's in a wheelchair while calling the shots. There's Dorghu (Brad William Henke), leader of the aforementioned gang of orcs which is called Fogteeth. Then there's Leilah (Noomi Rapace), leader of a cult called Inferni, they are working to bring the Dark Lord back and need to find three magic wands.
I try not to use such long paragraphs, but it's hard not to when setting this up. I still didn't spoil the events of the plot although it doesn't exactly take a genius to figure anything out. I already said what my wishes were and it's true, there's an opening montage that makes clear the divisions in the city and that some areas only elves are allowed to go into. I would have preferred that Bright explore that rather than go down such a ridiculous road. Now, seeing as the film went down this path I have to talk about it, and obviously I didn't like the way things went. I thought the first half the film was almost good. Yeah, I said it, and what? I don't have a problem admitting it. The problem with the film and this has to be taken into account when a lot of people are saying this is the worst movie of the year, is that people didn't pay to watch the film. They can also easily change the channel without having to worry about time investment, and because they're at home, they're going to think about what they could be doing with their time. I don't like this film, I'm going to be clear about that, but it ahd its moments. The shootout scenes are totally ridiculous and Bright also has some of the worst cinematography Ive seen in a long time, but I do think the shitty writer and director stumbled onto something with the concept of their world. The problem is that they just don't know how to use these ideas cohesively and craft them into something interesting.
Some of the jokes are offensive, which is hardly shocking considering the source of these jokes. I did find the banter between Smith and Edgerton to be nice, and a few of the action scenes have their moments as well. The one in the gas station probably wins out over the rest even though it's filmed very, very poorly. I think films need to embrace strange concepts more, even when they don't work out. This is not anything I would have ever expected to be made ten years ago, and after the sequel I doubt we'll see anything like this again. So if you cherish racist jokes wrapped up in a fantasy world, you should enjoy them while they last! Again, this isn't good, but it's reasonably fun. Each of the races has their own strengths and weaknesses, which is a whole other story now that I'm thinking of the ramifications of what I just said, but I'm going to end this review before I think about that too much. Bright fails when the film gets serious and should have played more and more to its strange side, but there is one thing coming to mind. What if this was a television show and the first half of the film was its pilot? What would people think then? I don't really have an answer to that, but even though the events of the film can best be classified as 'beyond rote', this was okay. The thing is, imagine being Netflix and spending $90,000,000 on this? That's totally insane, I have no idea what they're doing. The script is a goddamn mess and they're doing this again after everyone used the ideas they thought were good. You know the next one is going to be irredeemably shit.
5/10
2017 Films Ranked
1. Dunkirk
2. The Shape of Water
3. Get Out
4. Good Time
5. Mudbound
6. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
7. Logan
8. Wonder Woman
9. The Big Sick
10. Thor: Ragnarok
11. Logan Lucky
12. The Beguiled
13. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
14. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
15. The Lost City of Z
16. First They Killed My Father
17. Darkest Hour
18. A Ghost Story
19. Spider-Man: Homecoming
20. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
21. It
22. Battle of the Sexes
23. Okja
24. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
25. Kong: Skull Island
26. It Comes at Night
27. Split
28. 1922
29. Personal Shopper
30. Chuck
31. Atomic Blonde
32. Wheelman
33. The Lego Batman Movie
34. Megan Leavey
35. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
36. Menashe
37. American Made
38. Beauty and the Beast
39. Imperial Dreams
40. Gifted
41. Murder on the Orient Express
42. The Zookeeper's Wife
43. Free Fire
44. Win It All
45. The Wall
46. Life
47. My Cousin Rachel
48. Breathe
49. The Man Who Invented Christmas
50. Sleight
51. Alone in Berlin
52. A United Kingdom
53. Trespass Against Us
54. The Mountain Between Us
55. War Machine
56. Happy Death Day
57. Lowriders
58. Justice League
59. To the Bone
60. Wakefield
61. Bright
62. The Hitman's Bodyguard
63. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
64. The Mummy
65. The Greatest Showman
66. Rough Night
67. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
68. Sand Castle
69. CHiPs
70. Death Note
71. The Belko Experiment
72. The Great Wall
73. Fist Fight
74. Snatched
75. Wilson
76. Queen of the Desert
77. The House
78. Sleepless
79. All Eyez on Me
2. The Shape of Water
3. Get Out
4. Good Time
5. Mudbound
6. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
7. Logan
8. Wonder Woman
9. The Big Sick
10. Thor: Ragnarok
11. Logan Lucky
12. The Beguiled
13. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
14. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
15. The Lost City of Z
16. First They Killed My Father
17. Darkest Hour
18. A Ghost Story
19. Spider-Man: Homecoming
20. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
21. It
22. Battle of the Sexes
23. Okja
24. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
25. Kong: Skull Island
26. It Comes at Night
27. Split
28. 1922
29. Personal Shopper
30. Chuck
31. Atomic Blonde
32. Wheelman
33. The Lego Batman Movie
34. Megan Leavey
35. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
36. Menashe
37. American Made
38. Beauty and the Beast
39. Imperial Dreams
40. Gifted
41. Murder on the Orient Express
42. The Zookeeper's Wife
43. Free Fire
44. Win It All
45. The Wall
46. Life
47. My Cousin Rachel
48. Breathe
49. The Man Who Invented Christmas
50. Sleight
51. Alone in Berlin
52. A United Kingdom
53. Trespass Against Us
54. The Mountain Between Us
55. War Machine
56. Happy Death Day
57. Lowriders
58. Justice League
59. To the Bone
60. Wakefield
61. Bright
62. The Hitman's Bodyguard
63. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
64. The Mummy
65. The Greatest Showman
66. Rough Night
67. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
68. Sand Castle
69. CHiPs
70. Death Note
71. The Belko Experiment
72. The Great Wall
73. Fist Fight
74. Snatched
75. Wilson
76. Queen of the Desert
77. The House
78. Sleepless
79. All Eyez on Me