Bright reviews roundup: New Will Smith Netflix film getting torn apart by critics

It marks the streaming service's first attempt at blockbuster filmmaking

The new Will Smith film from Suicide Squad director David Ayer has not impressed critics.

Bright - set to be released on Netflix this Friday (21 December) - is the streaming service's first attempt at blockbuster filmmaking, costing them $90m.

It stars Smith as an LAPD officer who, alongside Joel Edgerton's rookie cop, uncovers an ancient artefact which sends them on a fight for survival over the course of a single night. Setting the film apart is the fact that it's set in an alternate present where humans and fantasy creatures, including orcs, fairies, elves and dragons, co-exist; Edgerton's cop, for example, is an Orc.

The film comes from the mind of writer Max Landis (Chronicle, American Ultra) and there's reportedly a sequel on the way. The critical consensus is now in and... well, reviews are ranging from the middling to the downright awful.

The Telegraph's Tim Robey gave the film a two-star review, stating: "You’ll either extend the movie the latitude Landis and Ayer think they deserve, or you’ll stare at it for two long hours wondering, amid the bullets and an awful lot of rainy confusion, why they think they deserve it."

Steve Rose of The Guardian was more generous, handing the film three stars: "Ayer has form in this area, having written Training Day and End of Watch (two buddy cop thrillers), and directed the recent Suicide Squad. He’s fond of macho, hard-hitting action: cartridge-showering shootouts; careering car chases; crunching hand-to-hand combat. Some of it is exhilarating; some of it is borderline incomprehensible owing to mistimed editing and a terminally gloomy palette. The pace barely lets up, but sometimes you wish it would."

Other critics refused to hold back their disdain for the film, with Forbes' Scott Mendelson congratulating Netflix for making "...a visually grotesque, dreadfully dull and hopelessly convoluted would-be franchise action movie just as well as the stereotypical Hollywood machine!"

David Ehrlich of IndieWire branded the film the worst of 2017, slapping it with an F grade, and writing: "Truth be told, Bright is so wretched that it invites only the most cynical of interpretations, leaving you with no choice but to assume the film was tainted by the knowledge that most of its audience would see it on their phones or laptops" - a review which Ayer himself later praised on Twitter.

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