In an alternate present day, humans, orcs, elves and fairies have been coexisting since the beginning of time. Two police officers, one a human, the other an orc, embark on a routine night patrol that will alter the future of their world as they know it. Battling both their own personal differences as well as an onslaught of enemies, they must work together to protect a young female elf and a thought-to-be-forgotten relic, which, in the wrong hands, could destroy everything. – Netflix

Bright is Netflix’s first attempt at a blockbuster movie. The film was written by Max Landis and directed by David Ayer.

For some reason, every critic seems to absolutely hate this movie. Some have even called it “the worst movie of the year,” obviously they haven’t seen The Snowman. The critics hate it but normal people like me and you are really digging it. Bright is just as divisive as The Last Jedi. At the time, I write this Bright sits at a 28% on the tomato meter but the audience score is an 87%. That divide is so crazy that I just had to see Bright for myself.

I don’t know what’s up with all the critics. Bright isn’t like the greatest movie ever but it’s really not that bad, I actually enjoyed it. The premise of Bright alone had me sold. The world presented in Bright is engrossing, there’s all these mystical creatures and there was like a big war with a dark lord but a lot is left unexplained. I don’t need to see more of the characters introduced in the film other than Joel Edgerton’s character but I do want to see more of the world. There was a frigging dragon just flying above L.A. and no one batted an eye. I want to know everything there is to know about that dragon.

Bright was basically a generic cop action movie. I saw bits of Lethal Weapon and Training Day in it along with some Lord of the Rings. The good guys find something that bad guys are looking for so they keep it away from them until the end of the movie when they have a final standoff. I just described a bunch of movies except this time there’s orcs, elves and all kinds of other things. Bright does avoid some action movie tropes, coupling that with the world it’s set in it leads to a mildly compelling story. I wasn’t on the edge of my seat watching this but I definitely wanted to know what happened next.

For the most part Bright is a good looking movie, it certainly looks better than some of the other Netflix movies. The orcs and elves look great and I assume the look of them were mostly achieved by practical effects. The elf look was likely rather easy to accomplish but damn the orcs look like well real orcs. Kudos to the makeup team behind Bright. The action on the other hand was subpar. Quite a few of the action scenes were laughable and the shoot outs were just plain boring. Someone needs to tell David Ayer slow-mo went out of style a while ago. Slow-mo shoot outs haven’t been cool since the last Matrix movie.

Bright is far from a perfect movie but it does have some bright spots. One of those bright spots was Joel Edgerton. Edgerton is one of the most underrated actors in Hollywood. Everything the dude is in he crushes; he isn’t in enough stuff. Edgerton was one of the most compelling parts of the movie and you couldn’t even see his face. After watching all the Lord of the Rings movies, I never thought I’d care about an orc. His portrayal of Jakoby was superb, I couldn’t help but feel bad and root for the guy. Jakoby better be back for the sequel. Oh, by the way Will Smith is in Bright, he played Will Smith. I was cool with big Willy’s style though, it looked like he might have actually been having some fun like in Men in Black.

Is Bright the worst movie of the year? Absolutely not, it’s actually a solid action movie set in a world far more interesting than the plot. Still a solid watch and if you’re like me you’ll wanna see more of the world. The only thing really holding Bright back is that it is just a little heavy handed with the allegory of real world racism. Hopefully the sequel focuses more on the world of Bright than our world.

I give Bright a 6.6 out of 10, would probably watch again.

“How are your holes?”