"Collateral Beauty" is a jaw-dropping film written by Allan Loeb and directed by David Frankel. This movie is centered around a male New York City advertising executive whose personality drastically changes because of the death of his six-year-old daughter. Howard’s drastic change puts him at a distance from his friends and his wife. The distance begins to weigh heavily on his life and company.

Set in Brooklyn, New York, the story slowly unravels as moments of Howard’s bundled up emotions for his daughter’s death start to manifest. The setting of the movie gives the appearance of hope and faith. Hope relates to the setting, in that Howard will find peace with himself and stop being mad at the world for his daughter’s death. The group meetings for parents of children who passed away further pushes the hope aspect onto the audience. Faith also is ingrained in the setting, when the people around Howard try their best to help him come back to life.

Three years before Howard’s daughter dies, he is seen as a joyful man. He is a partner of an advertising company. His face is shaved and his attire is neat. He has a great attitude and seems happy with life. One of his friends, who is always his partner in the company asks him to speak about a book he wrote. He talks about Time, Love and Death, as prominent themes in one’s life.

Next, the film switches to three years later and Howard is now seen as depressed and looks aged. His hair is not gray and his previously shaved face is now outgrown with hair. He takes on the appearance of a man that has allowed life to run him down.

Meanwhile, there is another plot angle. One of Howard's business partners, played by Edward Norton looks for a way to get Howard and their company out of its funk. He follows a young woman, who gave him a great angle for an ad, into a theater. There he finds two more people, an older woman and a teenage boy.

Norton's character goes back to the office and confronts his other two friends with a plan. Katie Winslet as Claire, Norton as Whit, and Michael Pena as Simon decide to hire the three actors and pay them 20 thousand dollars each to pretend to play Love, Time and Death, which are the things Howard writes to in the mail. Since Howard owns 60 percent of the company, they plan to videotape him acting erratically so the board can see him as unfit to be the decision maker in the future. They hire a private investigator to record his psychotic reactions when he became encountered with the people.

The three characters are struggling actors trying to put on a play but have no money. Helen Mirren as Brigitte pretends to play death and confronts Howard to tell him how death is not a bad thing. Jacob Latimore as Raffi comes as Time, which is something Howard feels did him wrong because he did not have enough time with Olivia. Keira Knightley as Amy pretends to be Love and comes to Howard crying about how he told Love to die in one of his letters. In the second encounter, which is also their last, Howard releases his emotions with anger.

In another pivotal scene, Howard walks past a street window of group therapy for parents with deceased children. He looks at a beautiful woman (Naomie Harris as Madeleine) through the window and after 10 seconds or so he continues to walk.

After the encounters of Death, he begins to go to the group therapy meetings but he does not talk when the woman asks him his daughter's name. He starts to walk out the door with tears in his eyes but then the woman tells him he does not have to speak, he should stay, listen and sit.

While sitting in a diner at night and walking she shares how much she still loves her husband. She lets Howard look at the last card her husband gave to her a day after her divorce was finalized. The card read:

“I wish we were strangers again”

In one of the last scenes, Howard’s three friend’s plan worked and the private investigate gets the psychotic recording, making it look like he is not fit to be part owner of the company. At a board meeting (a meeting with all the board members of the company including Howard) he figures out his friends tricked but he does not find out the three people playing Love, Time, and Death were their idea. He cried and tells them what they decided to do was smart because he is not fit to run the company. In the end of this scene, he signs over his percentage of the company to the rest of the board members and cancels the trust fund of his deceased daughter Olivia.

After his continued encounters with Love, Time, Death, he continues to see the woman and toward the ending he finds out that the woman is his wife he divorces after the death of his daughter.

At the end of the film, he comes to his wife’s excellently styled house and asks if he could ruin her lonely night on Christmas Eve. She agrees to let him in and she says she was previously watching a video of her six-year-old Olivia and asks Howard what his daughter’s name is, he does not answer. Then she steps closer to him and plays a video of him swinging Olivia around and he begins to cry (eyes filled with tears) and says "Olivia" and that she died when she was six from an incurable cancer. In the last scenes, both of them are walking holding hands in Central Park, New York.

This film was an extremely deep movie and I would advise everyone to go see the movie. The movie leaves the viewers with an understanding that life comes with bad things, love comes with bad things, death is not always bad but is apart of life, and time is inescapable. Also, a person should not waste time being mad at life because they cause life to pass them by and will badly affect the people around them.