Collateral Beauty

This review may contain spoilers!

A therapeutic and emotional journey that has some major bumps in the road when it comes to the script. I would give Collateral Beauty a 6.5/10.

The narrative of this film provides a very heavy focus upon loss and in particular the grieving process, there's a heavy analysis upon how Howard deals with the death of his daughter. While Howard isn't this character with a great many dimensions to him, he is a strong template for the film to have a conversation about grief and to explain that not all grief is the same. It's not an ugly depiction nor is it a kind one but there is a bittersweet charm to this film that sets it apart. The score for this film is phenomenal and absolutely lifts several scenes up, I wouldn't be remotely surprised if it doesn't shape up to be one of the best scores I'll hear in 2017.

Will Smith, who played Howard, crafts a very bleak withdrawn role through which he defines grief in a very unique and personal way; Smith really manages his character's emotional outbursts well and even has a powerful scene between Harris and himself near the end of the film. Edward Norton, who played Whit, is a bit sleazy and embodies the 'you have to be cruel to be kind' mentality very well; Norton is a great performer and in anyone else's hands this is a role who would have come off an antagonist rather than a misguided yet loyal friend. Michael Pena, who played Simon, isn't normally someone I'm used to in a dramatic role but he portrays his bitter feelings about his impending death in the film very well; Pena also allows his more jovial side to slip through the cracks and lighten some scenes, particularly in his interactions with Mirren. Naomie Harris, who played Madeleine, delivers one of her best performances to date in this film; her calm demeanour yet open honesty about her daughter's death makes her very easy to engage with as a character. Kylie Rogers, who played Allison, has a sharp delivery to her lines that creates some good tension between Norton and herself; I liked the scenes between these two and speaks a lot to Rogers' talent that she had a very commanding presence within these scenes.

However the best performance came from Keira Knightley, who played Amy. Knightley brought a sense of worldliness to the film, she seemed wise but also had a sense of other people - who they are and what they wanted/needed. Her scenes with Smith were important because they always felt the most honest in terms of his 'communication' with an abstract entity, Knightley portrayed love in a way that was neither cliched nor caricature. I liked her passion and her ferocity onscreen, she had a lot of power behind how she spoke even if she never allowed her role to lose control.

This was a film that fit into a very rigid and obvious structure: problem, solution, meet the abstract entities, meet them again and they all lived happily ever after. It was a plain film from start to finish and never tried to break the boundaries at all, when Brigitte, Raffi and Amy were revealed to actually be death, time and love it came as no surprise. Furthermore the revelation that Howard and Madeleine were in fact divorced and shared the same lost child was not only obvious but it was a really awkward revelation only salvaged by some great acting on Smith and Harris' part. The way each subplot around Whit, Simon and Claire was constructed to match up to the abstracts felt corny and took away from how seriously you took the plot as a whole. The cinematography was weak, feeling like a dollar bin romance flick due to the constant attempts at playing around with focus. The editing also felt kind of slow, shots lingered for far too long and then transitioned at jarring moments.

Kate Winslet, who played Claire, seemed like a character who really had no purpose in this film; she was the conscience of the friends group but her role in Howard's life as well as the company was never very clear. Helen Mirren, who played Brigitte, really seemed miscast in this film; her witty antics and portrayal of an actress hungry for the spotlight didn't feel 'meta' or ironic but instead felt a bit cheap and artificial. Jacob Latimore, who played Raffi, had a lot of energy but it always felt misplaced in his scenes; Latimore didn't seem to really engage all that well with the film's script. Ann Dowd, who played Sally Price, was a bit over the top even by this film's standards; her private investigator's illegal dealings to serve her client felt a bit over the top. Mary Beth Peil, who played Whit's Mother, gave the most melodramatic dementia performance I've seen in a while; it was a dumb quirk in the film used to make this plot seem relevant and less malicious towards Smith's character.