Bright (2017) refreshing but falls short in some areas

By Nicholas Norris |

In Bright, the new Netflix Original, the well-decorated actor Will Smith stars alongside co-star Joel Edgerton as they attack the current race problems and misconceptions involving police. The film takes subtle jabs at the problems with racial profiling and dives head-first into the corruption in the police department.

The director David Ayer did an amazing job of giving each of the star characters backgrounds to better establish a sense of attachment to both the key officers in the movie. The races in the movie are broken up into some fictional characters as well as humans, Orcs, Elves, and Fairies, which we actually get to see. However, there are a couple more we have yet to see but exist in the universe such as Centaurs, Dwarves, and Lizard People.

The plot build up is supreme but somewhat outlandish, like how Fairies have magical powers, that can be zeroed in by a wand that only some are able to use. As we follow the two main officers through their life leading up to the climax, however, you feel as though they could have better built on what was going on during all the action toward the middle of the movie. For instance, during some moments where they have been compromised as police, you’d think they would worry about their family, leaning more to Smith’s character, as he only brings up his family once or twice very briefly in between the lost moments.

Despite the rating of 27 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, this movie did a lot of things well! But the movie lacks some originality in which it falls into some stereotypical traps. It’s predictable enough to allow viewers to almost call what hate crime will happen to the Orcs via the police,  later coming back to haunt them in yet another common mistake by a majority of movies based on real-life stereotyping. On the bright side, Ayer did a wonderful job with the levels in each action scene, not just unnecessary explosions, but action based more on the situation to better produce a edge of your chair effect.

But getting down to the nit and grit of this $90 million film, it’s not horrible and can be referred to as a refreshing change up to the current streaming movies on Netflix. On the contrary, this movie fell short of what could have been an amazing film almost as if they could have done more to make this movie memorable.  Aside from the shortcomings, this movie is again not a waste of 1 hour and 57 minutes of one’s life; although there were better options on the streaming site. I personally give this movie a 5/10 due simply to the fact it felt almost as if the movie was trying to do too much.