Arguing Against — Aaron Haughton:

Bright doesn’t do anything new aside from adding the fantasy element to the clichéd buddy cop film, which ultimately falls into the same box every buddy cop film does: police corruption and conspiracy. I don’t buy the world for a second and the fantasy element isn’t used to enhance the film — it's only there to safely comment on race, which it doesn't even really do to any grand effect. The fantasy aspect only serves as a superficial divide between our characters of different background, of which we don’t really get information on until way late in the film, like the elves — we don’t find out they’re profiting off the human/orc conflict until around the third act, and it’s info that could’ve easily been tucked in as a one-off comment when our two protagonists drive through elf town in the first act. The best and only really effective use of the fantasy element was when Will Smith smashes the fairy. That’s really where the fantasy race commentary sorta ended in terms of doing anything new or interesting— and that’s 5 min into film.

It doesn’t have any real substance and doesn’t have anything to really say that wasn’t already said before. I asked myself, "what is its purpose?", and arrived on entertainment, yet I was bored through most of its entirety. It was a two hour labor, and the runtime dripped viscously like molasses. I didn’t feel any connection to the characters because they’re essentially cardboard cutouts of other cops from other films, cartoon caricatures drawn by the most elvish of men: Max Landis. The cinematography looked promising, but slowly became less filmic and more TVish as it wore on.

I went in with relatively low expectations and an open heart and still it did nothing for me. It was Netflix's stab at a blockbuster, but they bet on the wrong script and decided to imitate the lower echelon of Hollywood blockbusters, as opposed to aiming for the stars, like they did in Beast of No Nation, which is still Netflix's best and most artful production.

Bright is an unimaginative, uninspired tawdry mashing of genre and ideas that fails to deliver the goods as a hardboiled R-rated cop film or a fantasy driven sci-fi film. I'd rather watch a more realistic cop film that touches on the same notions of race and corruption, like 48 Hours, or L.A. Confidential.