McDormand has long deserved more prominent roles in major features and here she is the driving, ever-involving force that in spite of Three Billboards’ misgivings will keep viewers transfixed. Harrelson’s Chief is reliably compelling and in fascinating respects a consistent if notably imperfect moral compass, his arc regretfully the briefest of the film’s three mainstays. The presence of Mildred’s ex-husband (John Hawkes) hints at broader issues within the characters’ backgrounds deserving of greater introspection, as does his Charlie and Chief Willoughby both glaringly, and more inexplicably in the case of the former, having partners decades their junior, played by Australians Samara Weaving and Abbie Cornish respectively in two of the film’s further underdeveloped roles. Manchester by the Sea breakout Lucas Hedges, here almost completely wasted as Mildred’s son and a grieving brother, is proffered a hint at a storyline signalling his own not inconsequential significance in proceedings as he too rounds on his mother’s actions though is ultimately relegated to a few, largely silent encounters. Likewise, Peter Dinklage’s fleeting appearances, partly consisting of humiliating encounters with locals that are explicitly likened to elements of In Bruges, lack the defined, more fulfilled character arcs afforded only to the film’s three central figures. Mildred confronting a religious leader who objects to the billboards with a cavalcade of invective, however nailing the evident notion of a community sharing collective responsibility and grief for a tragedy, is rendered as a standalone and passing vignette, more akin to an invocation of the themes explored in McDonagh’s previously mentioned Belgian escapade than anything too closely resembling what else transpires in Three Billboards. These moments of shock value are less engaging than clearly intended at times not for their being at all gratuitous, with spare moments in the film reaching levels of excessive violence or vitriol, but for their being centered on characters or instances that bear little relevance or consequence to what is effectively a character study of three individuals, the singular if redoubtable achievement of this film. Kicking off with as much a focus on Mildred as on Sam Rockwell’s racist police officer Dixon, an early sequence clearly intended as a macabre jab at political correctness signals that the Director/Writer designs to challenge, confound, instigate and present less than glamorous if unusually complex portraits of what are undeniably unlikeable people. Lacking closure, she proceeds to furnish her town with the titular billboards to pressure the local police, lead by Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson), to find a suspect and bring the killer to justice.
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McDonagh’s latest is a darkly comic and at times dramatic focus on the impact of tragedy on a small town taking place months after Mildred (Frances McDormand) loses her daughter in harrowing circumstances. The In Bruges Director, less interested in a roundly cohesive plot or internal logic to the little world he’s created in the fictional Ebbing, Missouri than the uncommonly dynamic figures he can deftly create, three of whom are fairly of great note, has here achieved a character study to rival any of his contemporaries that yet, in many other respects, remains greatly wanting.
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He wants to make you uncomfortable and, most significantly, he wants to make you laugh.