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Movie Review: 'Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri'

Frances McDormand delivers in one of the best movies of 2017.

By Sean PatrickPublished 6 years ago 3 min read
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Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri stars Frances McDormand as Mildred Hayes, a mother whose daughter was brutally raped and murdered. The crime has not been solved after eight months and a frustrated Mildred is at her wit's end when she sees three empty billboards on a lonely street side outside of the town of Ebbing. Hoping to light a fire under the local Chief of Police, Jim Willoughby (Woody Harrelson), Mildred books all three billboards with a message directed at the chief.

It’s not long before Chief Willoughby is at Mildred’s door and a series of events unfolds that you will not be able to predict. Everyone from the Chief’s loyal deputy, Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell) to the billboard owner Red (Caleb Landry Jones) to everyday folks like James (Peter Dinklage), who has a crush on Mildred, gets drawn into the ensuing chaos. Some, like Dixon, are the cause of the chaos. Others, like Red and James along with Mildred’s son Robbie (Lucas Hedges), get swept up in the story.

Written and directed by Martin McDonaugh, director of the remarkable In Bruges and the middling Seven Psychopaths, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is lacking in McDonough’s usual biting wit but is nevertheless infused with the same angry energy of his previous films. McDonaugh is a writer-director fascinated by injustice, righteous anger, and the destructive power of guilt and those themes are dominant and well-explored in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

Frances McDormand is a force of nature. Her grief-stricken performance in Three Billboards could not possibly be more effective. Mildred’s grief comes from being a mother but also from a deep well of guilt, especially over the shocking final words she shared with her daughter Angela (Kathryn Newton), seen in a powerful flashback scene. Mildred wants the police to go to all lengths to catch her daughter’s killer and McDormand gives us the tragic sense that revenge may be all the feeling she has left.

McDonaugh and McDormand have no fear in exploring the dark, complex emotions Mildred is dealing with, refusing to let our heroine off the hook for her terrible behavior even as the filmmakers are clearly on Mildred’s side. Mildred is far from perfect and her actions in the film are not always sympathetic but they are always real, deeply felt and expressed in a powerful, provocative fashion. This is arguably McDormand’s career best performance, ranking next to her Academy Award nominated work in both Fargo and Almost Famous, movies where she played a soon-to-be mother and a frightened, insecure mother, both seeming to be distant cousins to her Mildred.

Sam Rockwell is McDormand’s equal in greatness in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Rockwell’s Dixon is one of those kinds of people that you feel like you know in your real life. Someone you know and do your best to avoid. Dixon is not your friend and hopefully not your problem. He’s mean and drunk and often fails to think before he acts. Somehow, however, he’s not a completely terrible person. Watching McDonaugh and Rockwell round this character into a sympathetic being is fascinating, a rare piece of acting that not many actors could pull off.

The final unimpeachably strong element of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is Woody Harrelson as Chief Willoughby. I can’t go into much about his character as I don’t want to spoil anything; the character is full of wonderful surprises. I can tell you that Harrelson is brilliant in creating a layered, measured character that, with the help of Abbie Cornish playing his wife, is also warm, romantic, and understanding. Harrelson is even better here in limited screentime as he was dominating the screen as President Johnson in LBJ.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is a consistently surprising, sad, and endlessly fascinating movie about wonderfully rich characters. While grief and anger reside at the heart of the film, you can’t help but be compelled by the humanity also at the center of this story. These characters are so moving, so emotionally compelling, and sympathetically flawed, you cannot resist them. This is one of the best movies of 2017 and an absolute must-see when Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri moves to wide release across the country on December 1.

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About the Creator

Sean Patrick

Hello, my name is Sean Patrick He/Him, and I am a film critic and podcast host for the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast I am a voting member of the Critics Choice Association, the group behind the annual Critics Choice Awards.

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