Review of Bright (2017) by Luno6 — 22 Dec 2017

First off, I want to say this movie is a 7 out of 10. Why did I rank it 10 then? To counter several other reviews I saw that gave it a 0 with two lines that explain nothing about why they don't like the movie. I would rank this movie an 8 out of 10, but the beginning of the movie is rocky; and the racism angle can be a bit heavy handed at times. I truly believe the critics giving this movie awful reviews went into this movie wanting it to fail miserably.

Now what was wrong with the beginning? Well right off the bat we are shown Will Smith getting blasted by an orc with a shotgun point blank, but wakes up completely fine. And are later told that he is going back to work just a few days after getting shot. That blast plate must have been made of dragon scales to block a shotgun that close with nary a broken rib. Smith is then told by his wife to get rid of a fairy in the front yard; which is equivalent to a squirrel in our word. Smith then beats the **** out of the faerie with the quip "faerie lives don't matter today!" I feel like this joke set a bad tone as probably the first joke of the movie, but nonetheless wasn't as bad as some of the other critics have claimed. Smith then goes and gets his daughter ready to go to grandmas. His daughter asked her how his new partner, Jakoby, is going to work out since orcs are mean and bad. Smith tries to teach her about tolerance and that orcs are no different from you or me. However just then Jakoby pulls into Smith's yard. Smith goes out and absolutely lambastes Jakoby and is pretty racist to him, which is a far cry from what he told his daughter literally 30 seconds ago.

At the station some of the most painful dialogue happens, as the other officers talk about how Smith is putting up with an orc partner that is just... painful to me. The other officers then do various other semi-racist things to Jakoby such as ask him if a mug shot of a sexual predator is his uncle, which is fine. But at one point they staple a literal "Kick Me" sign to Jakoby's back and the contrast between that and the earlier insult is a little strange. Besides that, my only other complaint is too many factions are introduced in such a short time. There are the Inferni, the Crooked Cops, Good Cops (really just one guy but still plays a major role), Magical Task Force, Shield of Light, The Orc Gang, The Hispanic Gang and then Smith/Jakoby/Tikka combo. That's eight different groups and if you cut one or two out and focused more on the others (especially the Inferni or Shield of Light) it would have improved the experience. Of course there are also sequels coming out so this is only a minor complaint.

So what does this movie do right? It has some good comedy, the **** gunfight and hospital scene especially. The characters are also well done and relatable, if a little over the top at the time. Edgerton pulled off a very hard character to play very well. The plot armor of the last fight where Smith and Edgerton take on 3 highly trained assassins wasn't highly unbelievable, especially since they were part of a literal prohpecy. However, Smith did get absolutely beat up and shot throughout the course of the film, I have no idea how he was even standing during the final scenes. Edgerton got healed by Tikka though so he wasn't as bad. The action scenes themselves were pretty awesome, my favorite was the slow-motion cop traitor scene with Bastille playing. Although some were a little strange like when an entire swat squad forgot they had rifles and went hand to hand with one Inferni. Overall, I think this was a great movie and if you have Netflix I would definitely give it a shot.