Where a subject is relevant, such as Dixon’s much-mooted torture of black prisoners, there isn’t enough dramatic meat to back this up. A worthy topic, but not one that has any bearing on proceedings other than being unnecessary polemic. At one point Mildred takes a priest to task about historical sex abuse by the clergy in a long monologue. This is a film in which his characters take potshots at every social issue, whether relevant to proceedings or not. McDonagh’s style is as blunt as his characters, and it’s there that the problems lie. Three Billboards is a tonal roller coaster of McDonagh’s usual firecracker dialogue, sudden spurts of nasty violence, punishing emotional punches and social invective.
The rest of the town aren’t so patient with Mildred’s stand, least of all the dim-witted, racist officer Dixon ( Sam Rockwell), whose vendetta begins to match Mildred’s in its intensity. While he’s sympathetic to Mildred, there are no leads and poor Angela’s fiery demise is cooling to a cold case.
Frustrated, she rents the titular unused billboards and puts up the bullish exhortation, “Raped While Dying,” “And Still No Arrests?” “How Come Chief Willoughby?” Bill Willoughby ( Woody Harrelson) is the popular Sheriff, whose terminal cancer appears to be an open secret. Despite some of these criticisms being entirely justified, Martin McDonagh’s latest is a dense, profane tragicomedy of revenge and redemption at once blackly enjoyable and surprisingly emotional.įrances McDormand is Mildred Hayes, a mother still grieving after the unsolved rape and murder of her teenage daughter Angela nearly a year earlier. After glowing reviews since November and a successful Golden Globes, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri has attracted something of a backlash and disembarks in the UK with enough baggage to fill a Boeing. In the age of digital cinema it’s baffling why films continue to be released Stateside months in advance of their appearance on this shore.
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