Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri
(UK/USA, 115 min.)
Written and directed by Martin McDonagh
Starring: Frances McDormand, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson,
Peter Dinklage, Jon Hawkes, Lucas Hedges, Caleb Landry Jones, Clark Peters,
Abbie Cornish
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| Fox Searchlight Pictures |
John Wayne is dead. Ditto Gary Cooper. These old gunslingers
are nothing but bones. Long after these movie stars departed, the iconic heroes
they inhabited also rode off into the sunset. The small town hero of the
Midwest is an old myth long dispelled from a country with no room for old men.
The small town of Ebbing, Missouri needs a hero like Mildred
to stand tall even if she does it in her own unconventional, controversial, and
cuss-laden way. She challenges the town’s sheriff, Willoughby (Woody
Harrelson), to get off his lazy ass and do his job, and she does so by erecting
three billboards outside their small town that read, in big black letters atop
a fiery red background “Raped While Dying…And Still No Arrests…How Come, Sheriff
Willoughby?”
The billboards are a provocation for Willoughby to find
justice in the violent death of Mildred’s daughter, Angela (Kathryn Newton),
for which the mother blames herself. Flashbacks reveal Angela’s final day at
home a terrible fight with Mildred that shows why this tough cookie of a mother
needs peace and closure. Mildred deals with the controversy in her own way by
dropping f-bombs and standing up to her challengers, sometimes giving them a
swift kick in the ass and sometimes staring them down with a focused, defiant,
and authoritative gaze.
The provocative challenge of the billboards is akin to
riding up on a horse and spitting before the lawman’s boots in the thoroughfare
for all the town to see. The billboards cause a hullabaloo, but they succeed in
bringing attention to the case. Mildred gets people talking and Willoughby
thinking. Willoughby faces a battle with terminal cancer and he too needs some
closure on this case. He wants justice to be his legacy, not the billboards
that could stand tall as a trio of defiant headstones. The controversy of the
billboards ensures that Mildred making some enemies in town and in the police
department, particularly good for nothing officer Dixon (Sam Rockwell), whom
she singles out as a sore spot in the Ebbing police due to a recent incident in
which he assaulted an unarmed black man.
Wise-cracking and deadpan funny, McDormand’s Mildred is a
hilarious anti-hero. The part might not be much of a stretch for McDormand, but
her performance as Mildred is a textbook example for a perfect marriage between
casting and part. One can’t imagine any actress other than McDormand playing
this role. She is very, very good and very, very funny using all the chops she
honed playing oddballs and eccentrics in Coen Brothers’ movies, but she also
develops the no-nonsense character with an effective core of humanity.
Mildred’s hardened sense of humour masks the pain she carries and McDormand
delicately handles the mother’s grief and loss, particularly in a touching
scene with a deer that ranks among the best in her career. It’s very hard to
judge Mildred for the extremes she reaches since McDormand makes her empathetic
and real despite the often cartoonish violence and mania of Three Billboards. It’s her best role
since Fargo.
McDormand leads one of the best ensembles of the year as Billboards assembles a motley peanut
gallery of memorable characters who will have audiences laughing and
gasping—sometimes from shock and sometimes for breath. Harrelson is
particularly good as the kind and sincere Sheriff Willoughby, a likeable
antithesis for the noble lawman of the westerner days. Rockwell is an unhinged
hoot as Dixon and he embellishes every ounce of the yokel’s arrested
development. Billboards, like a great
Coen Brothers film, lands the right actor for every part from McDormand’s lead
to smallest of the memorable and salt-of-the-earth country bumpkins who
populate the ensemble. Other highlights include Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage as Mildred’s pint-sized admirer
and Sandy Martin as Dixon’s crass and salty mama.
Writer/director Martin McDonagh (Seven Psychopaths) juggles some very delicate eggs as Three Billboards provides sharp and
irreverently funny commentary. At the centre of the film, however, is Mildred’s
quest to bring a sexual predator to justice. Billboards resonates with unexpected depth in the wake of the film industry’s
own response to power and predation. With McDormand’s unconventional anti-hero
leading the audience to an open yet thoroughly satisfying ending, the
splat-n-chuckle violence of Three
Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri invites us to consider how best to
confront outlaws in our midst. This thoughtful black comedy is one of the
year’s best films.
Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri is now playing.
