Starring: Will Smith, Edward Norton, Keira Knightley, Michael Peña, Naomie Harris, Jacob Latimore, Kate Winslet, Helen Mirren,
Distributor: Roadshow Films
Runtime: 97 mins. Reviewed in Jan 2017
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When Will Smith’s ad exec Howard loses his young daughter to illness, he transforms from a charismatic guru, spouting apparently knowledge-imbuing platitudes about the abstractions of time, death and love to a hoard of eager young creatives on his payroll, into a borderline suicidal hermit, who comes into the office each day only to spend hours setting up elaborate domino arrangements, which he unceremoniously destroys without a backwards glance (though the camera is certainly attracted to their picturesque demise – the perfect backdrop for the opening credits and a metaphor for his crumbling life!).
His partners in the business – Edward Norton’s Whit, Kate Winslet’s Claire and Michael Peña’s Simon – speak in hushed exposition; in the months since Howard’s kid passed, his depression has seen them leaking clients, and their only hope is to accept a generous takeover offer that’s on the table for a limited time. If only Howard, who controls the majority vote, would let them do so, but he refuses to speak with any of them, let alone capitulate the firm to their interests. The trio begin plotting to have Howard declared unfit to maintain control of his voting shares.
Neither Howard nor his colleagues act remotely like human beings in this scenario cooked up by screenwriter Allan Loeb. Whit, Claire and Simon constantly mention how awful they feel about plotting behind Howard’s back, but it falls to Simon to explain away their misgivings: ‘When something starts with a six-year-old dying, nothing’s going to feel right’. Well that’s fine then! Howard too, despite his grief, acts in a deliberately destructive and unsociable way – you’d think that a normal man in his shoes might acknowledge his own sorrow and step away from his business interests, not dismantle them through wanton negligence. Neither side of this argument holds much water nor does either party earn our sympathies – it’s the opening acts of a downbeat family drama crossed with the antagonists of a corporate espionage film, leaving us with no one to side or identify with.
When not riding his bicycle through oncoming traffic, Howard’s attempts to deal with his lot comprise writing letters to death, time and love, decrying their part in his daughter’s death. If you’ve seen the trailers, you’d be forgiven for thinking that literal embodiments of these three things show up to reply in person – Helen Mirren’s Death, Jacob Latimore’s Time and Keira Knightley’s Love. In actual fact, Howard’s business partners come up with the genius plan of hiring out-of-work actors to play the three roles and, after their PI has filmed Howard publicly interacting with them, digitally scrubbing the actors from the footage to make him appear mentally unfit to vote at their next board meeting. Mirren is the self-possessed Brigitte, Latimore is the volatile Raffi, and Knightley plays the conflicted Amy. The talent involved is undeniable (Smith can still raise reluctant hairs on your neck with a line choked out through Howard’s tears), yet the film is worthy of none of them.
As Whit, Claire and Simon split into pairs with Amy, Raffi and Brigitte respectively, the screenplay has them learn their own timely yet unexpected lessons because, as Whit tells Claire, ‘I have hidden depths. We’ve discussed this’ (assuring the audience of one’s depth rather than developing it is the height of transparently lazy filmmaking). Each exec gets exactly one not-so-hidden depth: Whit is a philandering divorcee who struggles to connect with his teen daughter (can she ever Love him again?); Claire is beholden to her ticking biological clock and researching sperm donors (does she have Time?); Simon is – spoiler alert – dealing with a possible illness (will he face his own Death?). The effort the script goes through to have each strand neatly tied up beggars belief, and that’s not even getting into the multiple twist endings that utterly defy the structure and logic established by the preceding 90 minutes. Yes, multiple. The one small mercy is that the notion of a creepy romance between Whit and Amy (remembering that Whit’s divorce was caused by his adultery with a younger employee) is abruptly abandoned.
‘Collateral Beauty’ is a phrase used in the film by Naomie Harris’s bereaved mother Madeleine, who lost her six-year-old daughter to cancer, as a reminder to look for the hidden splendor in everyday life, the moments of magnificence hidden in the margins of her misery. The audience is asked to undertake a similar exercise; try to spot the occasional glimmer of a good idea or the odd flash of star-wattage in the monumentally jarring tonal shifts and so-neat-it’s-nonsensical plot. I’d say that Madeleine had an easier assignment.
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