Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing Missouri

Film (2017)

With Frances McDormand (Mildred), Caleb Landry Jones (Red Welby), Sam Rockwell (Dixon), Woody Harrelson (Willoughby), Abbie Cornish (Anne), Lucas Hedges (Robbie), Sandy Martin (Momma Dixon), Peter Dinklage (James), Clarke Peters (Abercrombie)

Mildred (Frances McDormand) has lost her daughter to rape and murder and she’s furious that the local police have dropped the investigation into her death. To drive her point home she rents space on three billboards near town. Needless to say, it raises the concern of the local police, and others. The police chief, Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) has his own problems and Mildred’s attack complicates them. A younger officer, Dixon (Sam Rockwell), is full of anger, prone to drunkenness and not in a good position to deal fairly with any investigation. But, as destiny would have it, he falls into a position of greater responsibility and has to come to terms with issues of his own.

The main character in this film is determined, edgy, difficult, and Frances McDormand, who perhaps made her greatest impact in the landmark Coen brothers film Fargo (1996), has demonstrated that she’s capable of exhibiting enormous amount of grit. In this film, she’s got grit up to her eyeballs and it comes across in a lot of glaring, particularly at the police. McDormand is certainly an excellent actress, but the singularity of her required response here constrains that natural ability to a consierable extent.

In a more nuanced role, Woody Harrelson, as Willoughby, offers a quite thoughtful and modulated performance. It’s clearly the best performance in the film but not dramatic enough in some ways to be heralded as highly as others.

Sam Rockwell also has a fairly one-dimensional character, but one that goes a certain distance, and is dramamtically fraught in the way that gathers attention. Rockwell does a perfrectly fine job, but the role does not offer a great deal of breadth, even though it gets to weather some changes.

Again, in a nuanced way, Caleb Landry Jones (Red Welby), as the guy who sells Mildred the billboard space, provides an excellent, though low-key, performance.

Martin McDonagh’s script is interesting in many ways, but uneven. The letters Willoughby sends to various people around the middle of the film represent the best writing overall. They are exquisitely done and Woody Harrelson gives them a very fine reading. The scene in which Peter Dinklage as James is at dinner with Mildred is embarrassingly bad, the writing awful.

Overall the film has its moments and delivers on its promise of catharsis. The ending is so-so, kind of a bad-ass thing that leaves a lot hanging.

McDonough had written the offbeat and weirdly funny In Bruges (2008), which was a smaller film but much more consistent. In Three Billboards that interesting weirdness shows up but is mixed with too many lame moments to make it great.

Nonetheless, McDormand’s Mildred offers a vividly strong female lead and that goes a long way to providing its own unique satisfactions.

– BADMan