Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) [Blu-ray]
Crime | Drama

Mildred Hayes is grieving the rape and murder of her teenage daughter Angela seven months prior. Angry over the lack of progress in the investigation, she rents three abandoned billboards near her home, which in sequence read "RAPED WHILE DYING", "AND STILL NO ARRESTS?", and "HOW COME, CHIEF WILLOUGHBY?" The billboards upset the townspeople, including Sheriff Bill Willoughby and racist officer Jason Dixon. The open secret that Willoughby suffers from terminal pancreatic cancer adds to their disapproval. Mildred and her depressed son Robbie are harassed and threatened, but she stays firm, to Robbie's chagrin.

Storyline: THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI is a darkly comic drama from Academy Award nominee Martin McDonagh (In Bruges). After months have passed without a culprit in her daughter's murder case, Mildred Hayes (Academy Award winner Frances McDormand) makes a bold move, painting three signs leading into her town with a controversial message directed at William Willoughby (Academy Award nominee Woody Harrelson), the town's revered chief of police. When his second-in-command Officer Dixon (Sam Rockwell), an immature mother's boy with a penchant for violence, gets involved, the battle between Mildred and Ebbing's law enforcement is only exacerbated. Written by Fox Searchlight Pictures

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, March 1, 2018 Frances McDormand has built one of the most enviable film careers in recent history out of what might arguably be called characters with a surplus of quirk. While she'll probably forever be associated with one of her quirkiest roles, her Academy Award winning turn as Marge Gunderson in Fargo, even a cursory overview of McDormand's filmography provides more than a few examples of at least "slightly off" characters, many in films by the Coen Brothers like Blood Simple , Raising Arizona, Burn After Reading and Hail, Caesar!. As quirky as many of McDormand's characterizations often are, there's always a grounded quality to her performances, a realism that is perhaps more evident in some of her other films like Mississippi Burning. Quirk and realism are at about equal levels in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, the latest entry in McDormand's rather impressive run of Academy Award nominated performances. While there is a certain undeniable Coen-esque ambience to this film, it's the brainchild of writer- director Martin McDonagh, and, much like the Coen siblings, he rather brilliantly creates a kind of outlandish cast of characters who nonetheless come off as authentic and unforced. The film is a bit of a shaggy dog story, and doesn't easily fit into proscribed genres, something which may in fact only further recommend it to those tired of seeing so many cookie cutter entertainments.

Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand) is a no nonsense divorcée with a teenage son named Robbie (Lucas Hedges). As she drives the narrow winding country road leading to her home one day, she stops in front of three old billboards in various states of disrepair due to years of nonuse. Mildred then marches into the somewhat less than deluxe "headquarters" of Ebbing Advertising, the company in charge of the billboards, and hands manager Red Welby (Caleb Landry Jones) $5,000 for one month's rent for all three, giving him a notebook page listing what she wants them to say.

Addle pated policeman Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell, Academy Award nominated for this performance) is driving his patrol car down that same road a few days later, stumbling across workers affixing huge reddish pink banners on the billboards taking Dixon's boss, Sherriff Bill Willoughby (Woody Harrelson, also Academy Award nominated for this performance) to task for failing to have made any arrests in a horrifying rape and murder. An earlier allusion in a conversation between Mildred and Red makes it clear that Mildred is on a quest for justice for her murdered daughter.

That is, in essence, the underlying plot conceit of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, but what makes this film so continually compelling is how it keeps juggling its characters in unusual ways. One of these is in the very early going, where one might assume that Mildred would be the sympathetic "victim" and Willoughby the martinet and ineffective cop, but what ensues is quite the opposite. Willoughby comes off as a concerned professional trying to make a kind of harridan Mildred realize that sometimes cases take years to solve, especially when there are no witnesses and when DNA testing has come up empty in both local and national databases. What's even more remarkable even this early in the film is that, despite evident shortcomings in virtually all of the characters, every somewhat eccentric person in the screenplay comes across as a fully realized human being, despite the patent artificiality of some of the setup.

Those aforementioned shortcomings are perhaps most "focused" in Dixon, a fawning acolyte of Willoughby's who doesn't take kindly to Mildred's strategy, and who is under the sway of his hard drinking mother (Sandy Martin). Dixon engages in a campaign of harassment against innocent bystanders like Red and even Mildred's coworker at a little boutique, Denise (Amanda Warren). Meanwhile, the whole skirmish between Mildred and Willoughby takes on an even more melancholic aspect when Willoughby reveals to Mildred he's suffering from terminal cancer (something it turns out she already knows).

There are a number of intriguing developments that accrue which won't be spoiled in this review, including one kind of shocking death, as this coterie of odd folks interact in sometimes perplexing ways. There are a number of additional (and arguably too precious at times) supporting characters folded into the mix, including Mildred's ex Charlie (John Hawkes), a certifiable wife beater who erupts into violence only to immediately calm back down, and local "midget" James (Peter Dinklage), who offers Mildred a much needed alibi at one precarious juncture and who seems to have a "thing" for her.

As fans of the film and even some casual observers may be aware, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri has already picked up a slew of awards and is nominated for several Oscars, as well as having been met with near rapturous critical and audience acclaim. Make no mistake, I absolutely loved this film and applaud its courage to be both weirdly different and almost willfully balanced precariously between morality and recklessness, but I just didn't totally buy things, and was also struck by what to me were some noticeable plot holes. I wondered for example how Mildred found out the dentist was part of a "vast right wing conspiracy" against her, unless the subtext is that everyone in Ebbing knows everyone else's business. But if that's the case, how to account for the "coincidental" placement of two badly injured nemeses in the same hospital room? Aside from the "regular" (irregular?) townsfolk, how to account for the sudden appearance of a threatening guy at Mildred's job, a guy who seems to know everything about her, but who later turns out to be from another state and whose very appearance in the story is left pretty much unexplained? Also, some of the supporting bits like Mildred's ex and a priest who shows up are more glyphs than actual characters (this is especially odd in the case of Charlie, who seems to be a fascinating guy despite his anger management problems).

The film tips over into incredulity on at least a couple of occasions, probably most notably to an inarguably highly illegal pummeling one character is given at the hands of a policeman, something that doesn't result in the immediate arrest of the attacking character (who also engages in property damage of pretty substantial proportions). And there are undeniably contrived moments here, including how one character gets horribly burned, in a sequence that seems to be aiming for Blood Simple levels of misunderstandings and bad timing, but which simply comes off as too coincidental for its own good. But the kind of amazing thing is despite these perhaps niggling issues, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri manages to be a rather potent reflection on ideas of grace and forgiveness, as well as a kind of Old Testament "eye for an eye" ambience that ends up not caring whose eye, as long as an eye is involved.

In my typically curmudgeonly mode, I'm not sure I'm quite able to give an unqualified rave to Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, though I applaud its kind of insouciant energy as well as its really enjoyable trio of lead performances. There's something just slightly twee about the proceedings that didn't quite sit right with me given the kind of tart underpinnings of much of the story, but this is one film that has the commendable courage to be its own very distinctive entity. Technical merits are first rate, and with my probably picayune qualms aside, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri comes Highly recommended.

[CSW] -4.2- I loved McDonagh's previous film In Bruges because of the dialogue and the story. This story follows a clear narrative but not a predictable one and the cast performances are nothing short of amazing. Frances McDormand delivers a magnificent performance as Mildred Hayes, a tortured soul who places three billboards with attacks against the local police force for failing to heavily investigate the rape and murder of her teenage daughter. Woody Harrelson's character has the unfortunate task of heading a small town police force handicapped by staff incompetency and bias and is the prime target of her wrath for not finding her daughter's killer. But Sam Rockwell steals the show as Jason Dixon, a short- tempered drunken fool with signs of a heart tucked in beneath him (who would have thought). This is a highly suspenseful film that doesn't quite fit into a single genre. A drama and dark comedy, yes, a tale of revenge and family secrets, yes, a complicated indictment of small town prejudices and finally, a strong female lead that's not out of a marvel comic book. The story, the script, the performances, all brilliantly conceived and played out to keep you on the edge of your seat. Through grief and loss, McDonagh's characters shine in spectacular fashion, depicting angered souls who all are trying to do what they feel is right, while also learning the importance of forgiveness and empathy.
[V4.5-A4.5] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box


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