Bright

Dir: David Ayer

2017

***

I'm no big fan of David Ayer. I find his films to be incredibly samey and he seems to possess the same two tricks which he plays again and again. Some of his films are better than others, with Fury probably his best so far. His obsession with Los Angeles gang culture is tiresome though and after 2016's Suicide Club I'm surprised he's still getting any work out. Bright had its premiere on the small screen, which I think will always hinder a production. So far everyone seems to hate it, with some calling it the worst film of 2017. Now, as much as I've disliked some of his films in the past, Bright is far from the worst film of 2017 and is also a great deal of fantasy fun. It's no masterpiece sure, but it is a fantastic story and is entertaining throughout. Ayer has clearly been marked. I hate this new trend in Hollywood. The film was slated before it even came out, Ayer - and star Will Smith to some extent - have been labeled in the Hollywood media and I'm not sure if they will ever recover. I judge a film by its own merit, as should other people. I'm a film critic but I totally understand why people are turning on us, not understanding that some of us are independent and some of us aren't. Anyway, I thought Bright was pretty good. I loved the premise; in a presumably parallel dimension, Earth is just like ours, except magic does exist, as do Orcs and Elves. Orcs are pretty much how they are described in fantasy novels; they are slow, sluggish and not particularly pretty. They are treated as lower-class citizens, mainly due to the fact they sided with the mysterious dark lord over two-thousand years ago. Elves on the other hand live an exclusive life in their own city. They are successful, well dressed and control pretty much everything. Humans are somewhere in the middle. I also spotted a police horse-Centaur in one scene which I thought was brilliant but it wasn't a race that was explored. The criticism I've read for the film is that very little is explained, which I find a bit frustrating as the audience is given plenty of information with which to read between the lines. If the film explained the entire history of this alternative reality it would have been an incredibly boring film, as it was, it just got on with things and I thought it was quite a clever approach. Will Smith, who plays a human police officer called Daryl, is partnered with the first ever Orc cop and is put under pressure by his colleagues for excepting him. Orc cop Nick (played by Joel Edgerton) is shunned by his fellow police officers and by his Orc brothers. It is clearly meant to be symbolic of racism in America but I'm not sure it is truly successful in this respect. It is somewhere between Enemy Mine and Colors, but has far more in common with Alien Nation and nearly every other film Ayer has made. The fantasy element could have been stronger, as could the relationship between the two main characters but all in all the idea comes through. I don't think it would have been a great film to see in the cinema but for a television movie its pretty good. I do understand the criticism, I just don't see why Ayer got as much flak for it than any of his other films. The editing is bad and the construction and continuity needed a lot more work but it is better than many films hailed as 'great films' in 2017. It's a neat idea, an idea that I think can be built on. I'm certainly up for a sequel, even if it is directed by Ayer again.