Bright (2017)

Many films have great concepts. In fact, most films thrive on them, especially in their marketing, and especially if they’re not already part of a franchise. A good concept is the first step to making a good film.

A good concept on its own, however, does not a good movie make. There has not been a film recently that shows this more than Bright, Netflix’s latest big film project. Directed by David Ayer (Suicide Squad, Fury, and End of Watch) and starring Will Smith and Joel Edgerton, it has a great concept – a cop action thriller in a world of both human and mythical creatures – but unfortunately can’t seem to make the pieces work.

A huge part of this is the script. Max Landis wrote the original script that underwent a rewrite by Ayer, and it just doesn’t work. It’s extremely vulgar, which is not a critique on its own, except that it seems like the profanity is only there to remind you of the film’s rating. I’ve seen plenty of films that use very poor language but do so for the right reasons and in a natural way; this does neither of those and as a result just seems incoherent.

The editing doesn’t help Bright out either. There seems to be a lot of material present that simply doesn’t need to be that makes the film feel bloated. There’s entire subplots that do very little to advance any of the film’s goals – whether that’s social commentary or entertainment – showing Bright’s poor structural editing; most of these involve the orc community that Edgerton’s character comes from. There are also a ton of problems with the editing of the action sequences that make them so incoherent that it is impossible to make sense of them.

Honestly, Bright isn’t quite as bad as I might make it out to sound, but it’s definitely not a good movie. It has a good concept and a good cast, but it ultimately falls far short of anything it aspires to be. I do think that there could be a good movie to be made here, and maybe with some different people behind the scenes it could have been better; sadly, this is what we got with Bright, and it’s not worth watching.

My recommendation: Skip it.

My grade: 35/100