THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

Rating: 8/10

STARRING: Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, Caleb Landry Jones, Lucas Hedges, John Hawkes, Abbie Cornish, Zeljko Ivanek, Clarke Peters, and Peter Dinklage

RATED R for language (including racial slurs and some sexual references), bloody images, some violence, and emotional content

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri starts out almost flawlessly but can’t quite stick the landing.

A darkly-comic film that’s said to be a major contender for year-end awards, Three Billboards is about as good as can be for probably the first hour—the cast is perfect, the writing is superb, the cinematography is excellent, there are laughs as well as moments of genuine, tear-jerking pathos to be had—but it doesn’t quite deliver. Where fellow awards contender The Shape of Water had a strong finish after a somewhat rushed and cluttered first act, Three Billboards has a magnificent first hour and then can’t quite figure out where to go. It’s a shame, but it can’t fully mar my impression of a movie that was near-perfect early on.

Raped While Dying.

Still No Arrests?

How come, Chief Willoughby?

Those are the phrases the quietly-furious Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand) pays to have posted on three large advertising billboards on a back road of her rural podunk Missouri town, Ebbing, nearly a year after the violent death of her teenage daughter Angela. While the road is no longer the major thoroughfare it once was, when the words are obligingly posted by advertiser Red Welby (Caleb Landry Jones), within hours, the entire town of Ebbing is in an uproar. Mildred’s quietly suffering son Robbie (Lucas Hedges) is picked on at school. Her hard-drinking ex, Charlie (John Hawkes) comes by to tell her how enraged and ashamed he is. People on the street start talking and pointing. Local news crews come asking for interviews. And Red, the advertiser, faces boycotts and anger for helping Mildred. After all, everyone knows about Angela’s tragic passing, but they also know Bill Willoughby (Woody Harrelson), the police chief, a decent man who has recently been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. One particularly ticked person is police deputy Dixon (Sam Rockwell), a hick-dumb good ol’ boy who still lives with his momma and worships Chief Willoughby. As Mildred, Red and Chief Willoughby feel the heat, all these inter-connected characters are forced to do some soul-searching even while the prospect of solving the mystery of Angela’s killer seems as distant as ever.

Let’s get this out of the way real quick: despite the murder-mystery that is the first domino in this series of events to fall, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, is not a whodunit. Whoever so horribly violated Angela and then killed her – and thus scarred Mildred and her family in an irrevocably way – is a dark mystery that gnaws at all the major characters, but it doesn’t define the movie. Mildred’s angry, desperate, last-gasp act to have the billboards updated with her furious messages and the havoc it creates in a small circle of characters is what writer/director Martin McDonagh is really going for. And it’s tremendous in conveying that.

But, again, that is all there is to Three Billboards. In hindsight, it seems almost obvious that the movie doesn’t go anywhere besides small-town-in-an-uproar, because that’s really the only direction it can go if it’s not going to go the whodunit route, become an investigation movie, an action movie, or (least likely, but still not out of the realm of possibility) a romance that springs up to help Mildred cope with this tough stage of her life. It does offer some characters the chances to turn some personal emotional and psychological corners, but it does so in a quieter way than one might expect or want. Shoot, Three Billboards does stray toward convention with a late minor revelation that could have proven a more black-and-white ending, but also would have made this strongly acted and well-made film suddenly feel more like a far-fetched episode of Law & Order: SVU.

Still, if you’re here for small-town kerfuffle, you’ll get it here (Mildred gets a reprimanding visit from her former parish priest, and has a wild run-in with her dentist, about her peace-disturbing billboards). If you’re looking for some tense drama, you’ll get that, too, most notably in a devastating one-take scene where Deputy Dixon has a fit of grief-driven rage in the middle of the town. If you want emotional drama, the Hayes family has a scary domestic confrontation, and Chief Willoughby’s progressing cancer tugs the heartstrings (Abbie Cornish, as his long-suffering wife, has a heart-shattering soundless reaction when she gets some bad news). And if you are here for various in vogue socio-political commentaries about police, color, class, gender, small-town Southern traditionalism, or even the stigma of having some you love be the victim of a high-profile crime, you’ll get that, too.

Does it get a little preachy? Yes. Would that take any more away from the film if it had somehow had a more satisfactory ending? No.

Overall, writer/director McDonagh is to be praised, as are his actors. Frances McDormand fits the role of the brittle, quietly seething Mildred like a glove, the natural steel in her eyes making us believe every bit of her small-town stubbornness, snark, and fury. Woody Harrelson, too, is perfectly cast, delivering one of the performances of his career as the witty but haunted man who’s staring his own mortality in the face. The actor, who has a tendency to seem like every role he gets was made for him, has been getting some Best Supporting Actor buzz, and I’d love to see him get an Oscar nomination for this fine, scene-stealing role. Fellow Best Supporting Actor contender Sam Rockwell is surprisingly affecting in a memorable turn as the maladroit Dixon, the dumb-hick-cop-caricature turned on its head. Younger actors Caleb Landry Jones, Lucas Hedges, and Samara Weaving all make memorable impressions, and former Oscar nominee John Hawkes makes the most of a few pivotal scenes. The movie’s failings are the fault of the writer, not the actors, who make up one of the year’s finest ensembles. Only the great Peter Dinklage doesn’t have the effect desired, if only because he is sadly under-served by the script, which gives him a relative cameo in a role that goes nowhere.

In Summary

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, is a mouthful of a title, and it’s an intriguing, deeply-felt, and at-times hilarious look at how one woman’s stubborn, angry, outside-the-box act turns a small town on its head, and affects a wide range of people. The movie begins with a first hour that feels pretty much perfect, and, while it doesn’t quite follow through in delivering the most satisfactory ending, I still see why the movie’s a major Oscar contender. The cast, which includes a gimmie Best Actress nominee (Fargo’s Frances McDormand) and dueling worthy Supporting Actor contenders (Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell), is phenomenal in a series of multi-dimensional, well-written roles. The cinematography and score are solid. The socio-political commentary is there without smacking you in the face. Best of all, this is an ORIGINAL work—not based on anything. Seriously. I went out of my way to see this affecting dramedy, and I’m glad I did.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

Directed and Written for the Screen by Martin McDonagh

Rated R

Length: 1 hour, 55 minutes