Film Review: "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" (2017).

From the writer/director of Seven Psychopaths comes Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. This black comedy-drama film written and directed by Martin McDonagh. After months have passed without a culprit in her daughter's murder case, Mildred Hayes makes a bold move, painting three signs leading into her town with a controversial message directed at William Willoughby, the town's revered chief of police. When his second-in-command Officer Dixon, an immature mother's boy with a penchant for violence, gets involved, the battle between Mildred and Ebbing's law enforcement is only exacerbated.

In 1998, while traveling through the Southern United States, McDonagh came across a couple of accusatory billboards "somewhere down in the Georgia, Florida, Alabama corner" about an unsolved crime, which he described as "raging and painful and tragic" alleging the murder of a woman in Vidor, Texas. The story is based on actual events in Vidor, Texas just outside of Beaumont, Texas. The police ignored facts and the parents of a poor girl murdered in 1991 by an alleged hometown hero from an old money family. As the police have done nothing and the billboards are still up on Interstate 10. The billboards highlighted the incompetence of police work and deeply affected McDonagh. This incident, combined with his desire to create strong female characters, inspired him to write the story. By early May 2016, Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, Abbie Cornish, Lucas Hedges, Caleb Landry Jones, Clarke Peters, Peter Dinklage, Darrell Britt-Gibson, and Kathryn Newton were cast. McDonagh wrote the screenplay with McDormand in mind for the lead role. McDormand was hesitant to take the role of Mildred when offered to her, but was eventually convinced by her husband, Joel Coen. At the same time, principal photography commenced, and lasted over thirty-three days. Filming took place throughout North Carolina.

The film stars McDormand, Harrelson, Rockwell, Cornish, Hedges, Jones, Peters, Dinklage, Britt-Gibson, and Newton. McDormand has starred in over forty movies and whether she is playing a Brainerd police chief or an iron mine worker, has there ever been a better scene stealer? Watchable as ever, Harrelson and Rockwell provide two entertaining performances that should keep the audience in their seats.

Although the film is an enjoyably confounding experience, some will be put off by its parade of esoteric ideas. But what a parade it is. The film is a successful picture, mostly because its more concerned with its larger humanistic concerns than its winking meta-textual framework of McDonagh's other films. I can't say this film is as brilliant as it professes to be; however, it is a funny, thought-provoking and oddly entertaining a hundred and fifty-six minutes. It's a film that will leave you puzzled, especially after a rough first half hour, but the more you open your mind to will prove revelatory, entirely engrossing and incredibly funny. When the end result is quite as funny and off-the-wall as this, and the actors all quite as engaging and sharp, it's rather hard to care about the lack of lasting impact.

Simon says Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri receives:

Also, see my review for Seven Psychopaths.