Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) – M. McDonagh

Eccentric characters and an unusual unpredictable storyline do elevate films; the predictable Hollywood film has grown tiresome.  In Martin McDonagh’s Oscar-winning tragicomedy, we are treated to some very peculiar events in a fictional Missouri town, populated by extreme people (played by superstar actors).  The tone is comic but the content is dark, very dark – perhaps this allows us to face it more easily?  Frances McDormand plays a woman whose daughter was raped and murdered and who seeks to push the police to solve the case by putting up billboards to humiliate them.  Woody Harrelson is the police chief who is dying of cancer and stymied by the case.  Sam Rockwell is the not-too-bright but racist and hot-headed officer who butts heads with McDormand.  An assortment of excellent supporting players fill out the cast.  Each of the central figures follows an arc that shows some personal growth – and we are asked to contemplate how grief (and impending death) affect people.  McDormand and Rockwell show us some reactions.  Wittily, Harrelson attempts to foresee how others will react to his own death.  Although we may not get the ending that we hoped for (a good thing, perhaps), the film as a whole is refreshingly blunt (led all the way by McDormand’s brash portrayal) and a setting/cast that could easily spin-off a quirky miniseries. We want to see more of this town and its denizens.