Collateral Beauty: Blu-ray Review
The Movie:
When a successful New York ad executive suffers a personal tragedy and retreats from life, his friends devise a drastic plan to reach him before he loses everything. Pushing him to the very edge, they force him to confront the truth in surprising and profoundly human ways.
It’s hardly a secret that this film took a lot of heat because of its marketing strategy but going into it blind with that knowledge I felt like I could approach this film from another side. The film had a great premise and I thought that it had a lot of promise especially with the fantastic cast but its main problem lies in a part of the story itself. The thing is that the story centers itself around three people that try to make their friend/boss look crazy so they can take control of his company. What kind of friends do that? What proceeds to happen after that is the writing tries to make you have sympathy for them throughout the film and at that point I couldn’t see myself getting back on their side anymore. Will Smith’s portion of the story however was something that I felt should’ve been explored way more. I really liked what they did with it though as it involved tons of emotion and drama with the situation as well as a satisfying yet sad twist at the end. It was that portion that grabbed my attention and kept me watching but the rest of it felt unnecessary. If they would’ve changed or tweaked certain parts of the film then I think that it would’ve fixed so much (yes, even with the way that it was marketed) and it would’ve been way better received. All in all the film isn’t terrible and it’s actually really well acted but the execution of it was where it went a bit south and that, to me, is a shame. Do I suggest watching it? Yes of course but you may find yourself feeling a bit weird about some of the characters. 6/10
Special Features:
A Modern Fable: Discovering Collateral Beauty – This feature includes the cast and crew talking about the film and their experiences working on the film and what they think about the characters.
