Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)
In this darkly comic drama, a mother personally
challenges the local authorities to solve her daughter's murder, when
they fail to catch the culprit.
Director:
Martin McDonaghWriter:
Martin McDonaghStars:
THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI is a darkly comic drama from
Academy Award winner 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.
Official Sites:
Frances McDormand To Star In Martin McDonagh's Next Film, | Official Site | See more »Language:
EnglishRelease Date:
10 November 2017 (USA) See more »Also Known As:
Három óriásplakát Ebbing határában See more »Box Office
Opening Weekend:
$322,168 (North America) (12 November 2017)Company Credits
Technical Specs
Runtime:
Color:
ColorAspect Ratio:
2.35 : 1Did You Know?
Trivia
Martin McDonagh wrote the screenplay with Frances McDormand as the lead role in mind. See more »Quotes
Mildred Hayes: This didn't put an end to shit, you fucking retard; this is just the fucking start. Why don't you put that on your Good Morning Missouri fucking wake up broadcast, bitch?See more »
Soundtracks
Walk Away RenéeWritten by Michael Brown, Bob Calilli and Tony Sansone
Performed by The Four Tops
Courtesy of Motown Records
Anger is an energy in Martin McDonagh’s
brilliant “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” one of the best
films of the year. In this “Southern American with an Irish attitude”
story from the "In Bruges" writer/director that, like a lot of his work, recalls Flannery O’Connor in tone (the O'Connor
quote "The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach
it" could be this movie's tagline), anger is not treated like something
to be cured. Hollywood likes to teach us that anger is a sin, and that
only through acceptance and understanding can we find true happiness.
Easier said than done, right? How can you not be angry at an unfair
world? Life will take children before parents. Life will give cancer to
relatively young people. Life will be racist, sexist, and cruel. And you
should throw a few back and yell at something that unfair. You
should fight. It is only through that fighting and that rage that other
emotions like empathy and understanding can surface. Anger is not a
disease to be cured but a path on the road to comprehending the world.
No one does angry better than Frances McDormand, who does her best film work here since “Fargo”
as Mildred Hayes, a recently divorced mother who lost her daughter
Angela less than a year ago. Angela was raped and murdered, but the case
has gone cold. There was no matching DNA, so the spotlight has dimmed
and Mildred is getting no updates. She’s angry. She should be. One day,
she sees three barren billboards on a rarely-traveled road, and she
rents the space to ask the local chief of police, played by Woody Harrelson,
why there are no answers. Local media becomes interested in the
billboards, and the attention sparks a series of events involving not
only the chief but one of his more loathsome officers, played by Sam Rockwell. Peter Dinklage, Caleb Landry Jones, Abbie Cornish, Lucas Hedges, Clarke Peters, and John Hawkes fill out a ridiculously perfect supporting cast.
You
might think you have your finger on what this will be like from that
description, but McDonagh’s simply perfect script is never quite what
you expect it to be. The mystery of what happened to Angela would have
dominated other versions of this story, but this is not really that
movie. On one level, it is more about cause and effect than crime and
resolution. Mildred rents the billboards, which leads to pressure on the
chief, which leads to anger from his loyal officer, and so on and so on
down the line. McDonagh spares no one, allowing almost all of his
characters to be deeply flawed, especially McDormand’s Mildred and
Rockwell’s Dixon. Life has screwed over both of these people, and it has
made them both angry. Mildred is channeling her anger to solve her
daughter’s murder. Dixon has less of an idea of what to do with his, but
one senses early on that it’s probably going to eventually cost him his
job.
Rockwell often plays nice guys, but he’s more effective
here as a racist, violent cop than you might expect. He looks older and
pudgier, like he drinks himself to sleep every night and doesn’t really
trust that life has much in store for him. Rockwell has a big arc in
this film and he takes no false steps, as usual. Harrelson is great too,
but the film belongs to McDormand, who can do more with a withering
glare than most actresses can do with a monologue. She is simply
stunning when it comes to internal language, so often revealing the pain
underneath the rage. Her Mildred takes no prisoners, but also feels
like someone literally torn apart inside by grief. McDormand can destroy
a monologue, too—a scene with a priest offering counsel is an
all-timer, earning applause at my screening—but she’s even more
impressive in the minor beats. It’s the curl of a lip to fight back
tears or the downward glance to stop herself from punching someone. This
character is so completely, fully realized in ways that other actresses
couldn’t have come anywhere close to capturing. It’s stunning to watch.
Of course, McDonagh deserves a ton of credit for not only directing
her but giving her such a great part in such a smart script. Empathy and
peace with the too-common injustice of our world is a common theme in
cinema, but it’s usually handled with kid gloves or pat resolutions.
There are no easy answers in McDonagh’s world—no clear-cut heroes and
villains. You will start to question Mildred and you will start to
defend Dixon. In a sense, that’s one of McDonagh’s most stunning tricks
with this film. The world is more complex than most movies would have
you think, and it takes a writer of his remarkable ability to convey
that. He’s also operating at a more technically accomplished level than
ever before, particularly in the way the film uses a great score from
Coen regular Carter Burwell and well-balanced cinematography from Ben Davis.
Not
every speedbump given us by life teaches us tolerance. A daughter
shouldn’t die at all, much less brutally. But what do we do with that
knowledge? How do we channel our anger at an unjust world? “Three
Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” is one of those truly rare films
that feels both profound and grounded; inspirational without ever
manipulatively trying to be so. Very few recent movies have made me
laugh and cry in equal measure as much as this one. Very few films
recently are this good.
FINAL RATING: 10/10 FOR THE GENRE & 10/10 OVERALL. Lovely movie with an extra portion of sarcasm.
Thanks for reading and have fun watching movies.
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