Director: David Ayer
Writer: Max Landis
Starring: Will Smith, Joel Edgerton
Back when the script for Bright was circling studios to produce and distribute the film, Netflix outbid everyone and quickly attached Will Smith to headline the flick. It was obvious by the $90 million price tag on the film, it was meant to be a stepping stone for Netflix's film division, the only part about the streaming giant that hasn't taken off. They've produced a few mainstream movies, from Beasts of No Nation to this year's War Machine with Brad Pitt, but nothing with a budget as big as Bright. When they elected to bring in David Ayer as director (and script re-writer) it signalled that Bright would more than likely be a dreadful affair. Sure enough, the one trick pony who couldn't execute the stolen episode of Arrow he used for a shooting script in Suicide Squad once again takes a could be original film and turns it into a slipped disc of fractured filmmaking. The end result is a very underwhelming, utterly predictable and overall boring film with an eventual boring sequel already green-lit.
When I first heard of Bright, it was somewhere after I had watched Suicide Squad, entirely against my better judgement and hearing the news that Will Smith was coming to Netflix enthralled me. Then I got the grave news that the film would be manned by David Ayer and that he would rewrite Max Landis' script. Well, Neither Ayer or Landis are on a hot streak lately. Landis most recent film credit was writing Victor Frankenstein, one of the worst films of last year. Ayer, who I believe peaked with his writing credit for Training Day, has failed to make three other films that aren't just some rehashed, scene jumbled play on that same Training Day script. Ayer showed his complete inability to manage a big budget or create an original script in Suicide Squad. Putting them together with Will Smith, who hasn't exactly been going hard at the acting game lately, just seemed too problematic for Bright to work. Still, I watched it opening day like everyone else.
What I found was a lazy use of fantasy elements, which was the focus of the trailer all along. It was obvious that Ayer had rewritten the script, since every scene from Training Day was in the film, with the exception of the scene where Ethan Hawke smokes crack. Over and over, I kept cursing at the screen for having to see the same five scenes in every David Ayer corrupt cop drama, but this time it didn't even make sense. When he used the fantasy elements, he only used them in little pop up mentions to service the lazy, gutted story that went nowhere. Hell, there was a dragon in one scene so brief and unexplained, most people probably missed it. It was this lack of depth in the conceptual stage of the film that suffers the most. Besides the fact that Ayer is a mess behind the camera, lacks true cinematic vision and can't assemble an action shot with any rhythm, the real problem is his constant need to insert the same tropes in all his movies. Everyone is racist and cops are corrupt is his main draws. You saw this in Training Day, Deep Blue, Street Kings, and End of Watch. This reason alone should be enough to keep Ayer's name off cop drama directors lists; but apparently Netflix had to learn the hard way.
Don't expect any character development or the story to be rightfully explained. There is no real story, just the quick references of everything magical that is never fully displayed and otherwise serves somewhat the same as a skinny guy flexing at the gym; this movie has no muscle. It is driven from A to B to C without common reasoning and leads to scenes where Will Smith says, "We need to change clothes, their looking for two cops" only to give up his police issued bulletproof vest for a hoodie, walk outside and then INSTANTLY be found by everyone who is chasing him anyway. It is that lack of knowledge of their own script and scenes prior that insult people who waited months for a Will Smith Netflix movie. With a handful of secondary characters who we never even know by name or real purpose and called in acting from the great Will Smith, I couldn't help but feel bad for poor Joel Edgerton, who spent hours and hours a day in makeup to be the ONLY person who showed up to act.
Where they go with the second film, we don't know, all we do know is Will Smith is on board and I personally hope David Ayer will get blackballed from filmmaking sometime next year. Until then, plan on seeing bad versions of Training Day over and over again. I wouldn't even value the cgi, which was only utilized in one scene really, a scene Ayer loved so much he spent more time going back to it then developing the main characters. This is the kind of film that is too lazy to name it's Orc main character anything other than "Nick". This is the kind of film that shouldn't be called a film, it should be called an overpriced piece of shit, because that's what David Ayer created.
3 out of 10
Tyler Baker
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