A shared ‘bloodlust’
Dixon’s impetuousness is matched by Mildred’s own uptick in violence. We see her kick a pair of teenagers in the crotch after someone in a crowd throws a drink at her car. More seriously, she firebombs Ebbing’s police station (and almost kills Dixon in the process) after an unknown individual torches her controversial advertisements. In both the crotch-kicking and the firebombing, Mildred’s lust for justice is targeted against innocent parties — only one of those kids could have thrown the soda (and it may have been neither of them), and we later learn that the man who burned down her billboards doesn’t work in the police station.
Dixon and Mildred — the racist cop and the feminist firebrand — finally pair up in the film’s closing moments, joining forces and heading into Idaho to track down the man Dixon attacked. His DNA wasn’t a match for Mildred’s daughter’s killer, but no matter. There will be blood. “I know he isn’t your rapist. He is a rapist though. I’m sure of that,” Dixon says, cradling a shotgun. “I got his license plate. I know where he lives.”
“That’s funny. I’m driving to Idaho in the morning,” she says.
“Want some company?” he asks.
“Sure,” comes reply. the
The film closes with the two of them trundling off to Idaho, shotgun jostling somewhere in the backseat, admitting to each other they’re unsure of going through with this plan to get justice for someone, somewhere. Maybe. Perhaps they’re aware that they’re sating nothing but their own bloodlust by going down this road. Regardless, their dawning awareness of the lunacy of their mission isn’t enough to get them to stop. And it’s hard to imagine these two hair-triggers simply calling it off after confronting the man in question.
For all that’s been written about the redemption and humanization of Dixon in the film’s second half, it seems to me that “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” has a much stronger message about the dangerously fascist impulse that goes along with the desire for total and perfect justice. It is a damning critique of not only the police for protecting their own but also of those who would join forces with the most corrupt among the cops in order to gain some measure of righteousness in this world. If one were feeling puckish, one might even compare Mildred’s self-righteous, half-cocked pursuit of evidence-free justice against all men everywhere to certain currents in our cultural moment.
Given the environment in Hollywood — at present the land of #MeToo and #TimesUp, with any number of men caught in the crosshairs — maybe an award-winning movie questioning the push for punitive justice based on little proof is just the film we need right now.