NormanCroucher

Director David Ayer smashes together the vérité-style grit of his cop drama 'End of Watch' with the effects laden decadence of his more recent directorial effort 'Suicide Squad'. The premise of 'Bright' makes for a really cool pitch - imagine a cop movie set in a world where magic, orcs and elves exist alongside humans in everyday life. This should have been a lot of fun to watch but Ayer and screenwriter Max Landis get too bogged down in trying to turn an inspired but silly story into a heavy-handed allegory for racism and prejudice.

Will Smith blows back onto the screen with a performance that helps to remind us that he was once the biggest movie star in the world and, while his box office wattage has most definitely diminished in the intervening years, he proves that he can still hold a picture together with his charismatic screen presence. Perhaps his most impressive feat in 'Bright' is taking Landis' ham-fisted attempts at gritty street dialogue and managing to sell it with an energy and conviction that it probably didn't deserve. He has sturdy back-up in the form of a completely unrecognizable Joel Edgerton as his orc cop partner, who continues to choose interesting and diverse roles to test out his thesping chops. These guys manage to build a semi-convincing bromance in spite of the screenplay's familiar take on the mismatched cop dynamic that sees Smith hate his partner from the outset only to grow to care for him over the course of the film's play (bonding through all the shootouts and chases with stock buddy-com banter). These two actors do their best and acquit themselves well, although the rest of the cast seem to veer between stilted or embarrassed, never knowing which genre tone they should be playing up to more.

And the tonality of the piece is what creates much of 'Bright's' disconnect. Its sociopolitical ambitions are loftier than its actual subject matter and these two conflicting tones - popcorn fantasy cop thriller versus self-serious contemporary racial allegory - don't quite mesh. One assumes that the orcs are supposed to be representative of the black community, with some scenes depicting them being beaten by cops or cussed out and marginalized because of how they look, and while this concept worked really well in 1988's similarly rendered 'Alien Nation', it often rings hollow here because Ayer and Landis mix their metaphors far too often and their overall message is muddy as a result. Perhaps they meant the orcs to merely represent the "other", in which case they probably should have avoided using every ghetto racial stereotype in the book when it came to their background players.

There is something shockingly cheap and stagey about the production too. Considering the $90 million budget and the scope of the story it feels very small. That epic, sprawling world you might be hoping for never truly pops off the screen and that is a real shame because the potential here was pretty high. That is not to say that the film is without any pleasures. Once the MacGuffin of the magic wand kick starts the action, we are treated to some finely staged set-pieces that blend bullets and magic to relatively entertaining effect and a steady momentum begins to build as our heroes face down all kinds of foes, both supernatural and human. It's like Harry Potter replaced Ethan Hawke's character in 'Training Day' and it is hard to deny the charm of that.

'Bright' succeeds on occasion when trying to blend its two disparate genres and you can sometimes glimpse what might have been had Landis simply sold the idea and let a more capable screenwriter pen the actual script - David Ayer would have been a top choice! Maybe then Ayer could have passed over the directing reigns to someone with a bigger appetite for fantasy and a more audacious vision (Guillermo del Toro or Peter Jackson come to mind). But that is what could have been. We have to focus on what is, and 'Bright' is merely a pedestrian film and a colossal wasted opportunity.

Perhaps Al Pacino should have called it a day at the turn of the millennium and taken early retirement because his career post-2002 has been a downward spiral ever since. 'Hangman' brings to mind another serial killer thriller of Pacino's called 'Righteous Kill' from 2008, where he reunited with fellow acting titan Robert De Niro, and in which both legends got taken down by a ripe script and suspect editing.

In a plot ripped straight outta the 1990s, Pacino plays a retired detective brought in to help Karl Urban's haunted-by-his-past cop to catch a serial killer who hangs his victims as part of an elaborately constructed real life game of hangman. The killer taunts his pursuers with absurd clues while possessing an uncanny ability to know every move they are going to make right down to when they will arrive at crime scenes. It is utterly ludicrous but familiar for the genre. The same kind of criticisms could be leveled at David Fincher's 'Se7en'. The serial killer's master plan in that film relies on the single hope that the cops investigating the case are smart enough to notice all of his abstract clues while managing to make connections between the victims and figuring things out at the exact right time. But because 'Se7en' was so well done, its deeply contrived plot endured against any real scrutiny. 'Hangman', on the other hand, earns no such free pass because it is just risible nonsense.

The film certainly benefits from having someone like Pacino loan out his screen presence, even if it feels like he is simply on paycheck autopilot. Urban, as Pacino's fellow detective, fairs less better and, let's be honest, is hardly a match for his seasoned co-star when it comes to performance (then again who is?). Urban is not a particularly compelling actor to watch anyway, unless he's impersonating DeForest Kelley or covering his face with a Judge's helmet, while Brittany Snow is way out of her league but, in her defence, she is saddled with an entirely implausible access-all- areas journalist character who wanders into active crime scenes with the lead detectives and helps to solve clues and race to save victims-to-be. I ask you: is there a police force anywhere in the world that would allow such a scenario to take place? This is a heavy reflection of just how contrived and lazy the plotting is. And then there is the woeful finale where the killer monologues some motivation for all the murders and you realise just how nonsensical his master plan has been.

These problems with the film do not end with the listless performances and the botched hatchet-job of a script. They are in fact exacerbated by the rather leaden and unimaginative direction by Johnny Martin (now there's a name you can trust!), who stages his scenes without any panache or style, while his set-pieces feel perfunctory and uninvolving. What could have possibly been an enjoyable but throwaway 'serial killer with a gimmick' story loses any sense of its momentum or impact because the presentation is so dull. Not that any semi- competent director could have rescued this from the bargain bin it was born in.

Pacino deserves better material. We've seen this guy conquer this genre plenty of times before in excellent movies like 'Sea of Love' and 'Insomnia', and the fact that he has been relegated to starring in this down market VOD feature is the most insulting part of the whole viewing experience. 'Hangman' sometimes verges on the unwatchable, and Pacino, as a talent, has been anything but.