Bullet Points: Bright
There are certain movies that have no business being released in theaters. I don’t mean that they’re not good enough to be seen by audiences around the world, I only mean that no movie trailer would do justice to the material in a way that would get people excited to see the film. Bright is one of those kinds of movies. You may have seen the trailer for the film and thought that it looked cool, or maybe you saw that it was the highest budgeted film to be released by Netflix to date. Either way, both of those things would have still left you in the dark as to what Bright was really bringing to the table.
Synopsis: Set in a world where mystical creatures live side by side with humans. A human cop is forced to work with an Orc to find a weapon everyone is prepared to kill for.
- Setting the table: The world of Bright isn’t much different than our own. Okay…maybe a bit different. There is nothing that would make me believe that it’s set in the future or anything but it features a number of fantasy elements that we normally see in Tolkien-inspired works. I’m speaking of Orcs, Elves, Dragons, Fairies, and the like. There is a very distinct pecking order with the races, as well. No different than what you’ll find in today’s day and age, I guess. The Orcs are more downtrodden. Especially the ones that are focused on in this movie. Many of them are gangsters living in L.A., butting heads with police at every step. The Elves are living the high life. They have their own areas of town, complete with enhanced security and an overall more privileged lifestyle.
- Fresh Prince: Will Smith plays veteran cop Daryl Ward. He’s a man who understands that he’s a short timer and is just looking to get out before he gets killed. We open the movie with him getting shot directly in the chest by a shotgun-wielding Orc so you already know that getting shot by an Orc is going to cause conflict between Daryl and his Orc partner Nick Jakoby (Joel Edgerton).
- Buddy Cops: The buddy cop genre has been played to death but it hasn’t been done right for a while. Yeah, Lethal Weapon is amazing and we’ve seen the “fish out of water” deal with Jackie Chan a couple of times but nothing has really jumped out at me in the sub-genre for some time. Bright plays it a bit differently than most buddy cop movies but only in the fact that one of the guys is an Orc. It doesn’t take an idiot to see that you could easily replace the Orc character with any other minority and still have a story worth telling. I love me a good buddy cop movie so I was sold on Bright from the first moment of conflict between the two.
- Bring on the Baddies: Ward and Jakoby find themselves in deep shit from pretty much the first moment that Ward makes it back from his injury. The obstacles in place for Ward and Jakoby are so intense that you almost feel sorry for the duo. The big focus in Bright is on a magic wand that is coveted by about every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the movie. Once the magic wand is loose, Mexican gang members, Orcish tribes, Kung Fu Elves, and just plain old dirty cops fight to get their hands on it.
- A land of magic: I love me some magic. I can sit for hours and watch dudes like Shin Lim and Chris Ramsay pull off tricks that will make you rethink your entire life. The magic in Bright is much more deadly than anything you’ll see on YouTube. The people using magic in this world aren’t doing it to try and guess your passcode on your phone or attempt to figure out which card you pulled from the deck. They’re trying to bring back a being that could rule the entire world. No thanks.
- Shootouts and slug fests: The action of Bright is downright nasty. Most of the movie takes place over the course of one evening so all of the action is dark, dirty, and violent as hell. The two L.A. police officers are on the run from some pretty bad dudes for the majority of the film so you can be sure that they have to break out all the stops to survive the night.
Magic or not, these Bonus Bullet Points deserve your attention:
- Orcish music sounds pretty badass. Even their love songs are Metal as hell!
- Even in the Fantasy world people like to watch the Joe Rogan Podcast.
- There is a reason that the poster looks so similar to the one used in End of Watch; they’re both directed by David Ayers and these movies are very similar. I would almost describe Bright as Training Day with Tolkien.
- “We’re not in a prophecy. We’re in a stolen Toyota Corolla!”
- I never knew how much I wanted to see a centaur cop.
The Verdict: I didn’t read any reviews for Bright before I watched it but I saw a headline that said it was one of the most disappointing movies of the year. I couldn’t disagree more. I had a great time watching Bright. I will be the first to admit that I love backstory and world building and you can tell that the world of Bright has way more to offer than just a single, solitary film. There is so much going on in the background of Bright that I don’t find it odd at all when I see that writer Max Landis describes it as “his Star Wars“. If you dig movies like Hellboy for their extended use of magic and sorcery, some District 9 socio-economic/political stuff, or you just love a good old buddy cop movie, then Bright is one you need to see. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
