Review: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (15)

USA 2017 115 mins  Dir: Martin McDonagh  Cast: Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, Peter Dinklage, Samara Weaving, John Hawkes, Abbie Cornish

Like “rollercoaster ride”, “high-wire act” is one of those terrible film critic clichés that really ought to be banned. But it’s hard to think of a description more appropriate for In Bruges writer/director Martin McDonagh’s finest screen work to date: a blistering, richly characterised, Coen-esque black comedy of grief and revenge that pushes and pulls our sympathies for its characters, wrong-footing us each time we think we think we know where the story is going. It genuinely feels as though McDonagh could fall off at any moment, especially when Three Billboards… threatens to lock in to a cheesy Hollywood redemption narrative. But his sure touch never falters and unlike his previous film, the glib-yet-fun Seven Psychopaths, there’s real emotional heft beneath the sparkling, magnificently profane dialogue and audacious plot twists. The performances are universally excellent too. Not since Fargo has Frances McDormand been gifted such a peach of a role.

She’s cast as no-bullshit, potty-mouthed bereaved mother Mildred Hayes, who burns with fury at the laidback Ebbing police department’s failure to make any progress on their investigation into the rape and murder of her teenage daughter. After seven months of inaction, embittered Mildred rents three billboards on a rarely used road outside town and spreads across them a giant upper case white-on-red message, carefully phrased as a question rather than an accusation so as not to find herself charged with defamation: RAPED WHILE DYING. AND STILL NO ARRESTS. HOW COME, CHIEF WILLOUGHBY? That’s the popular local police chief (Harrelson): a family man who struggles with problems of his own and presides over a department that is dominated by hot-headed, drunken, racist dimwit Jason Dixon (Rockwell). Unrepentant Mildred’s actions render her universally unpopular, even among members of her own family and those who had previously been sympathetic to her plight. But to use the colourful language of the film, she really doesn’t give a flying fuck.

Severely clad in dungarees and a bandana, McDormand delivers her most caustic performance to date as acid-tougued Mildred, occasionally letting us see the pain behind her cold eyes as she lashes out in all directions. Hell, this is a woman who’s unafraid to kick children of both genders in the genitals if they cross her. When a silvery-tongued local priest attempts to persuade her to take down the billboards, you just know she’s going to let rip after hearing him out and it’s hard to resist the temptation to stand up and applaud when she does. But this isn’t one of those films where everyone else steps back to allow the star to grandstand. Each character is beautifully written and well-rounded. Harrelson’s Chief Willoughby spars brilliantly with Mildred, but emerges as a more complex figure than the lazy backwoods cop stereotype might suggest. Sam Rockwell repays McDonagh’s faith in him (like Harrelson, he was also in Seven Psychopaths) with a career-best performance as Dixon, who has swallowed just enough political correctness to understand that it’s language that counts, not attitudes or action. When someone uses a racist epithet to describe his brutal treatment of black suspects, he’s quick to correct them. It’s “persons of colour torturing” that he enjoys. In any other film, he’d be an unredeemable scumbag or undergo some kind of unconvincing epiphany. McDonagh charts a more interesting path for him.

Peter Dinklage has a small but important role as the “town midget”: a used car salesman with a drinking problem, who has an unaccountable soft spot for Mildred. This affords the Game of Thrones star another opportunity to pull his trademark wounded puppydog face. Getting even less screen time, but making the most of every second, is Samara Weaving as Mildred’s ex-hubby’s relentlessly perky, desperately dim jailbait girlfriend, who’s doomed to be known as ‘Shit Girl’.

McDonagh’s sparkling dialogue never feels forced or false and in lesser hands this funny, violent, unexpectedly moving pitch-black comedy would have felt like an awkward tonal clash. Instead, it’s an absolute triumph.