David Frankel throws us into the heart throbbing, crying uncontrollably, mind breaking world of grief that is Collateral Beauty. This is the story of a man that underwent terrible trauma when his daughter died, and his struggle to cope with it. The movie displays that when she dies, he loses all connection to people and the world around him. This is especially noticable by his co-workers managing his business with him. He stops talking to people, his eyes look lost, and he doesn't seem to focus on his work as much. In order to hide his condition, he subconsciously forces himself into the exquisite stacking of dominoes, which becomes more significant through the film. His friends see his struggle and decide that he is not capable of running the company so they hire a private investigator to convince the commitee board of such accusations. But what they find is that he has been writing to 3 things to sort of ponder the universe for answers, he writes these letters to love, time, and death, confessing his grievences of why they let this happen. Armed with this information, the group convened that to make him seem crazy; they needed to see him talk to these things. So they hire 2 actors and 1 actress, to play love, time, and death. The plan was working great until the actors uncover he was beilieveing them all too realistically. Still, the group was not deterred from thheir goal and accomplished suspending him from the company. But in his case, this incident had just re-opened the wound, now that he knows who he was talking to were in fact humans; the fabric of his world was torn to shreds. He found himself slipping into depression and felt like he couldn't go on in this state anymore. So in a last moment of relief, he goes to a group therapy with other formers parents that lost their children. He eventually finds consciousness and meets the group leader. In the end of the movie, we find that the leader was actually his wife and his brain was mentally incapable of remembering her. The whole movie is a testimony to how your perspective on grief and loss is, those who treasure the moments before grief and the good memories afer, notice the Collateral Beauty after the fact. Those who don't, can't even get past grief. It makes you question yourself as a person and wonder what really is a t our core values and beliefs.

The main character in this story is named howard; he is played by the extremely talented Will Smith. I admire that the director first went to better develop the characters' history and background before going into the movie plot as well as the conflict. I also applaud the pick of actors they chose, they have such distinct features as well as the voices that set them apart from the rest of the cast. It was truly amazing to see all different people that loook so unique come and fit perfectly together. The actual shapes and descriptions of the cast fit in with the actual person almost as if they were the same people. They also are painted to like average people in the movie, which anchors the audience to realism making them feel like they could go through that too. Likewise, their personas were built of pure genius. A major flaw of each of the 3 co-workers lined up directly with Howard multitude of problems, and adds a "personal" touch in the relation of the characters to the main character.

Finally, the scenery added the final cherry on top to the cinema that wrapped it up in a pretty bow and pushed it over the top. Each individual scene sets a certain tone for the event quite clearly. Almost as if the scene were painted on canvas. The director was also a little sneaky about this detail but I caught it. Whenever the light changed brightness, the depth of the meaning in the scene would change as well. So associate the light and the dark with bright moods and bad moods. This was very clever if I do say so myself. However, I do have some complaints about this magnificent movie, to start off the city was slightly dull to begin with. The city itself was a little too basic for my liking. Secondly, the location and prop placement was way too coincidental for it to be real. Lastly, the houses and apartments are a bit cliche, I mean , they looked nice but as I said before, they were way too " accindental" to be realistic. But I will end on a good movie if your life is just not making sense and you need something that will not quite explain everything, but it will at least reaffirm that you are not alone in your struggle.