When I was a young lad, I would sometimes play Dungeons & Dragons. (I was a Magic User, and man would I ever warp wood.) My cousin was the D.M., which stands for Dungeon Master—meaning he would create the setting and narrative flow of gameplay. He was great at his job but, naturally, I also wanted to sit in the big seat. After much nagging, he let me switch roles during a campaign. That’s when I realized that having a cache of nifty ideas was not the same as telling a story.
I was reminded of this watching David Ayer’s wretched film Bright, which debuts on Netflix this week. There is a whiff of an interesting idea in there, but it is buried in tedious scenes lacking clear direction, endless generic (and poorly lit) shoot-outs, and cringeworthy sequences of allegedly witty banter. This movie is an absolute wreck—which is unfortunate, as it is also something of a big debut for Netflix’s original-films shingle.
The streaming platform distributed three outstanding movies this year: Okja, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), and especially Mudbound. But Bright’s enormous budget—reportedly upwards of $100 million—and the visibility of A-lister Will Smith effectively resets the counter to zero. A disaster like this, a movie that would be more at home on Syfy than a premium streamer, is not likely to gain Netflix the mainstream film-industry acceptance it craves.
Bright is set in an alternate reality in which generic races from the realms of high fantasy live among us. Hulking orcs are discriminated against (though they still play in the N.F.L.), while sleek elves live in luxury and “run everything.” There are also bird-size fairies that sometimes fly around; perhaps they are sentient as well. But when our hero, L.A. cop Daryl Ward (Smith) swats and kills one, he announces, “Fairy lives don’t matter today”—a typical example of the film’s attempts at humor.
There’s a vague notion of the film recontextualizing real-life issues in a fantasy setting, but its world-building is so inept that there is zero point in scrutinizing any symbolism beyond the obvious. Orcs deserve respect, but The Man won’t give it to them because of ancient tribal grudges. Eventually, Ward will learn to hold an olive branch, thanks to his relationship with his partner, Nick Jakoby (Joel Edgerton)—the first ever orc cop. Guess who’s coming to the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association dinner?
Edgerton is, to be fair, tasked with being engaging despite a ton of makeup. But his whole character is predicated on a transparent device: Nick does not know “how things work,” so he asks a bunch of dumb questions that give us our (painfully slow) entry into this half-assed world. Unlike the 1980s film and TV series Alien Nation, a similar buddy-cop movie between human and “other,” we don’t see a split between reality and the fictional world. Bright would rather just dunk us in the deep end and let the story take over—which would be a good idea if there was actually a story to tell.
In lieu of anything compelling, Ayer (coming off the travesty that was Suicide Squad) and his screenwriter, Twitter troll Max Landis, decide to follow Ward and Jakoby on one deadly night through this alt-universe L.A. This involves a lot of running, crashing, shooting, cursing, more shooting, and . . . did I mention shooting? It is a dreadful bore as a narrative and, even more aggravating, a visual non-event. How do you screw up a fight scene with elves at a neon-lit strip club—or the sort of chase sequences so exhilaratingly shot in films like Good Time, made with a fraction of Bright’s budget?
During the endless slog that is Bright’s central adventure, Smith discovers that he is “The One” (snore) after rescuing an elf girl who has gone rogue and stolen a magic wand. They are then chased by elven baddies, including Noomi Rapace—who, I must say, wears a dynamite blazer. There are crooked cops, and feds, and gangbangers, and an orc mafia. You’d think this would be an opportunity to at least go wild with production design, but other than a few shots involving a throne of bones, it’s just a typical low-rent direct-to-video crime movie that somehow snagged Will Smith.
While I had the misfortune to see Bright in a theater, most people will simply press “play” out of curiosity on their Roku remote. I am willing to concede that this might elevate the experience a little; the ability to take a quick trip to the kitchen or restroom after shouting “no, don’t pause it” to your partner on the couch will be liberating. Of course, you could also do a quick search and see if the vastly superior Vin Diesel vehicle The Last Witch Hunter is streaming—and watch that instead.
