Collateral Beauty : Movie Review



Everyone suffers loss. For some the loss comes as a bigger tragedy than most others. How we as individuals cope with life after loss, differs, but we share the same three abstractions of life : death, time and love. That's what 'Collateral Beauty' tries to explore and explain. Tries to.

Will Smith plays Howard, an ad exec whose six-year-old daughter died due to a rare ailment, and he hasn't been able to pull his life together in the last couple of years. His friends and partners have tried to reach through to him but to no avail, and now their company could go under. They have a way to save it, but it's a deal that needs Howard's signature, and if they can't get him to even talk to them about it, they will have to wrest away his controlling stake by proving that he is unfit to make those decisions. Some friends eh? 

Of course, the friends have their own battles and sense of loss they are fighting too. But it still makes it hard to fully get behind them or feel for them as much. They hire a P.I. to see what Howard does and they come to know that he writes letters. Not to people, but to things. To Death, to time and to love. 

Meanwhile, Howard is completely unaware (seemingly) of all this around him, or he simply doesn't care anymore. But then he starts having conversations, with death, time and love, who say they have come to reply to his letters, each with their own lesson.

While the movie does pack some powerful lines, and some nice music, it does feel like its dragging itself along. It has some interesting characters brilliantly cast but fails to give any of them the kind of depth they deserve, while Will Smith himself seems to struggle with playing a grieving man who has shut himself off from the world and people. 

Also, it doesn't really seem to have grasped the severity of the tragedy of the character. The man lost his child, and only on occasion does the movie point out, that his life can never be fixed. But even so, he must look forward, and live. Yet the plot can't quite showcase the depth of that scenario, and becomes a bit too, wishy washy with a hint of the 'Christmas miracle' factor. All the while, never quite explaining, what the phrase 'Collateral Beauty' truly implies.

I'd still recommend it, and I personally will watch it over and over for the fact that it has great performances by Helen Mirren, Emma Thomspon, Michael Pena and Edward Norton. Keira Knightley was good too, but that's a bit of a biased opinion in this case and I am looking forward to seeing more of Jacob Latimore. Naomie Harris too gives a pleasing performance.

But I have to be fair with the rating, and I'd give this one 9 out of 12 gingerbread cookies.

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