Movie Review: Collateral Beauty

When Death, Time and Love face you in the lowest moment of your life, what would you do? What would you say to each of them? 


Year 2017 cinema experience opens with a heartwarming and eye-opening movie entitled Collateral Beauty starring Will Smith, Kate Winslet, Keira Knightley, Edward Norton, Helen Mirren, Michael Peña, Naomie Harris and Jacob Lattimore.

A story of a man struggling for some answers in his life after losing the love of his life - his 6-year-old daughter.

Will Smith playing Howard Inlet, a creative director, divorced and just lost her daughter from a rare disease, the story of Collateral Beauty basically revolves around his character with Winslet, Norton and Peña playing a vital role, being as his best friends and colleagues.

Mirren, Lattimore and Knightley, theater actors who were commissioned by the three best friends to portray as Death, Time and Love, to whom Howard sent these letters to express his feelings after losing his daughter, served as the key characters for Smith to open up his feelings.

Mirren playing Death, Lattimore playing Time and Knightley playing Love, the core of the story flows with the confrontation of each of them to Howard, mirroring the real-life condition of Howard's three best friends.


A story that will make you realize to value every relationship you have in life, Collateral Beauty shares the very essence of humanity - that everything is connected one way or another. 

The saddest and probably the most hurtful part of the movie was when Howard's friend revealed their plan - their betrayal of Howard - to make him look crazy despite of the fact that they all knew he is going through something - the death of her only daughter.

But this scene made me adore the character of Howard because given his condition or status that we knew only he can cure or answer, he faced them in best mind condition/thinking to make a logical resolution and just let them go - leave them behind...

I personally like the scene where Naomie's character finally revealed. The emotion flowing out of Smith was so touching that I couldn't help but to cry.

If you lose someone so dear to you, this movie is a good reflection - to connect and reconnect with the feelings, things or persons that you still have around you. It also tells everyone that just like everything else, all that matters to us have two sides, as always. It is up to us on how are we going to define each element and how are we going to cope up from these struggles.



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