Bright Review: 3 Ups & 6 Downs

3. The Social Commentary Is Lazy & Ham-Fisted

There's a vaguely satirical element to this film that was hinted at in the marketing, that in a world where fairies, Orcs and humans live together, the prejudices that already exist in real life are massively exaggerated.

Joel Edgerton's Orc cop Nick Jakoby, for instance, is viewed with pure disdain by his human cop colleagues, and there's a prevailing "cops are scumbags" commentary that feels undeniably pointed towards the recent Black Lives Matter protests. In fact, in one of the film's first scenes, Will Smith's cop Daryl Ward kills a fairy that's bothering him, before telling some onlookers, "Fairy lives don't matter today."

Though Max Landis has written the film with a socially conscious bent, unfortunately it's about as deep as a puddle and laughably lacking in subtlety, to the point that it ultimately feels shoehorned into a story that didn't really need it.

There was absolutely a way to pull this off, but Landis doesn't seem interested in anything more than a cheeky, simplistic nod to real world events.