Will Smith is a gift for any film’s marketing team. Send him out to do the rounds and this is a man who’s charisma could genuinely sell ice to Eskimos. He even almost – almost – manages to sell Collateral Beauty. Smith plays Howard, a high-flying creative businessman whose grief at the death of his daughter has broken his marriage and now threatens his company. Kate Winslet, Edward Norton and Michael Peña are his collateral friends/colleagues who dubiously decide to interfere by hiring a trio of actors to portray Death (Helen Mirren), Time (Jacob Latimore) and Love (Keira Knightly) in a bid to turn his life around or – better still – prove that he’s lost his marbles and thereby cut him out. If Passengers hadn’t already claimed the prize, Collateral Beauty would have walked away with the award for most disturbing-yet-supposedly-friendly plot of the year. Oh, 2016.
Let’s not beat around the bush here – something Morten Tyldum could do with taking note of – Passengers is a real let down. One-part Jennifer Lawrence, four-parts bland, clichéd, pedestrian disappointment. It’s genuinely gutting.
Choosing to go backwards feels an unusual step for a franchise with a patchy history of doing so but that’s Star Wars for you. A phenomenon with its own rulebook. How many other series could get away with two comebacks, a strangely dated font (even director Gareth Edwards agrees on that one) and each time expanding and complicating its narrative whilst somehow skewing mainstream? Set as ever ‘a long time ago’, longer than last year’s most recent addition and longer than the originals but not quite as long a time ago as the the prequels (perhaps a ‘somewhat long time ago’?) Rogue One is the second film to come from the Disney reboots in what’s looking like an annual treat for the foreseeable future. If this one’s anything to go by at least, an annual treat it will be.
The Film Blog 