Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Synopsis: With months having passed without an arrest in her daughter's murder case, Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand) sets up three billboards outside her town challenging Police Chief William Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) to explain why. When his devoted second-in-command, Officer Dixon (Sam Rockwell), gets involved, matters escalate.

Having seen its trailer which tries to sell it (even to the point of not showing the key billboard) as a potty-mouthed action comedy I was not expecting much of Martin McDonagh’s film. In fact, that trailer crams most of the film's gutter-talk into its brief running time, the rest of it, maybe 90%, is a robust serio-comic take on a mother’s devastating grief and the ripple effect that her provocative action has on a handful of people immediately connected to it.

At the centre of proceedings is Frances McDormand in an Oscar-winning, albeit somewhat over-rated performance (the part was written with her in mind by McDonagh) as a verbally abrasive woman in emotional lock-down struggling to deal with the sorrow and anger consuming her. Mildred wants answers but Chief Willoughby can give her none.  The well-meaning chief tries to reason with her but he has his own problems in the form of an aggressive cancer.  On the other side of the chief is Dixon, a none-too-bright racist and momma’s boy with a violent streak who takes Mildred’s action as an affront to his chief. Rockwell, who starred in McDonagh’s previous film, Seven Psychopaths (2012) is well-suited to the role, his characteristic off-kilter style making DIxon at once emotionally immature and physically dangerous.

All this sounds like it could be bleak stuff but McDonagh keeps the tone relatively light without diminishing the gravity of Mildred’s pain as she tears up the town with not a thought for anyone else. This includes not just the police but her husband (John Hawkes) who has left her for a 19 year old twit (Australian actress, Samara Weaving in a droll turn) and her teenage son (Lucas Hedges) who is trying to forget the horror of his sister’s demise.

This is where the film is to some extent compromised.  Both Seven Psychopaths and McDonagh’s film prior to it, In Bruges (2008), made hearty, Hollywood-style entertainment out of criminal violence. Clearly rape, murder and a mother's suffering don’t lend themselves to such levity and McDonagh, within the context of his overall approach, deals with this with sensitivity.  Hence, we empathize with Mildred even as her behaviour grows increasingly insupportable.  The character of Dixon is, however, less successfully handled. Somewhat bizarrely, when he commits an act of unconscionable violence he is merely asked to hand in his gun and badge. And his shift from being Mildred’s dim-witted antagonist to self-sacrificing collaborator comes too easily, making the story's trajectory feel stitched together rather than something that evolves organically. Thus the film’s redemptive ending, whilst being an understandable commercial strategy, gives it a generic crowd-pleasing feel.

Having said that, the story is original, the dialogue zesty and the performances from a well-experienced cast are excellent. 

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