DIRECTOR: RATING:
I★ ★ ★ ★ n the first act of the awkwardly titled but brilliantly executed Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, we think we’ve got a handle on the main characters and what they’re all about, including:
Mildred Hayes ( Frances McDormand), a grieving divorced mother simmering with rage because the local police haven’t found a suspect or even unearthed a promising lead since her teenage daughter, Angela ( Kathryn Newton), was kidnapped, raped, set afire and murdered.
Mildred’s teenage son, Robbie ( Lucas Hedges), a smart ( and smartass) kid mourning his sister, but also deeply embarrassed by his mother’s increasingly bold and even violent antics.
Police chief Willoughby ( Woody Harrelson), who is gruff and foulmouthed, but also clever and a good family man.
Jason Dixon ( Sam Rockwell), an alcoholic, thick- witted, near sociopathic cop who lives with his mean old racist witch of a mother.
Red Welby ( Caleb Landry Jones), the smirking, perpetually jumpy local advertising man, who gladly accepts Mildred’s cash offer to paint a message on three billboards that are, well, just outside the town of Ebbing.
We think we know these people, because writerdirector Martin McDonagh has done a masterful job with the script and with his visuals ( North Carolina stands in for Missouri), and because the cast turns in perhaps the best ensemble work of any movie this year.
And yet just when we believe we know these people and we have a pretty good notion of where the story is going, we are hit with surprises both small and enormous. The fates of multiple characters are not the fates we expected.
Following the path of Three Billboards is a little like driving down an unfamiliar road in beautiful but forbidding country late at night, alternately marvelling at the scenery and gripping the steering wheel tightly when yet another steep drop or sudden change of direction presents itself.
About those billboards. Painted in bold black letters against a blood- red background, the message reads: Raped While Dying And Still No Arrests?
How Come, Willoughby?
Everybody in and around the town of Ebbing knows the billboards are referencing the horrific murder of a teenage girl some eight months ago, Chief and even though Red Welby says he can’t divulge the identity of the individual who paid for the billboards, everybody knows it had to be Mildred.
Willoughby is ticked off, Mildred’s ex- husband is mortified and Dixon the cop is ready to take matters into his own hands. Meanwhile, Mildred goes on the local news and tells her story.
The mystery surrounding Angela’s murder is always lurking on the edges of Three Billboards, but somehow McDonagh has taken the bleakest of subject matters and treated it seriously while also serving up one of the best dark comedies I’ve ever seen. In scene after scene, McDonagh and that outstanding cast deliver small chuckles and hearty laughs that spring authentically from the situations