His business partners, played by Winslet, Norton and Peña, are understandably nervous because Howard was the charismatic force driving the agency and is the majority shareholder. With sliding profits, they want to buy him out, but he refuses to discuss such details in his withdrawn state. Norton is so concerned that he hires a private investigator (Dowd) to spy on Howard, and she manages to retrieve his three notes from a mailbox, illegalities be damned.
Then, magically, Norton stumbles upon a solution when he is taken with an attractive young woman auditioning for an ad (Knightley) and decides to follow her across the street to a theater. There, he finds her rehearsing a play with a young man (Jacob Latimore) and an older white-haired lady (Mirren) and decides, hey, let me hire you three to act as the human incarnations of Time, Love and Death, and make Howard completely nuts so we can prove he is unstable and save our company. Mirren, who remains relatively unscathed despite being forced into sassy senior mode, has second thoughts. In one of the more timely asides in the script, she asks if Norton’s character wants the trio to “gaslight” Howard. But as desperate thespians are wont to do, they all agree so they can fund their play.
Of course, it isn’t as simple as that, considering how much attention is paid to the personal travails facing divorced dad Norton, childless workaholic Winslet and a cough-riddled Peña as well. By the time Howard starts opening up to a grief counselor (Harris), who also lost a daughter to disease, there is a growing sense that funny business is afoot and not in a good way. Sure, there are up-to-date references to hard-to-get “Hamilton” tickets and Norton jokingly observes, “Now they have ’CSI: Cleveland’?” to his dementia-suffering mother while watching TV. But these asides are simply distractions from what appalling twists lie in wait.
I don’t think I've witnessed a film this year that managed to so completely and utterly collapse into crass garbage in its last few minutes while abusing what little goodwill it has. Sort of the way a shaky line of dominoes can tumble down in a flash. Forget “Collateral Beauty,” whatever that means. This is “Collateral Schmaltz,” the kind that has the power to close rather than open your heart as you rush out of the theater while the terribly named OneRepublic ballad, “Let’s Hurt Tonight,” provides exit music.
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