+ Best Dramedy of the Year
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| Frances McDormand rises like a hurting, vengeful Phoenix on this hype-filled poster for Martin McDonagh's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri |
In small town Ebbing, Missouri, a mother grieves over the violent death her daughter suffered some months ago, but her grief has also turned into rage because justice still hasn't been served. She gets an idea that calls attention to her desperation and anger.
Three Billboards takes a powerful premise and spins a punchy, compelling story around it. It is the third film from great English writer-director Martin McDonagh (In Bruges (2008)), who meshes more drama into his comedic streak here than he has before, while keeping his penchant and knack for actively using violence in his narratives. His older brother John Michael McDonagh (Calvary (2014)) is also a terrific filmmaker, but this may be the best film between the two to date.
Frances McDormand (Almost Famous (2000)) is a perfect fit for the lead as the sharp-edged but sympathetic fury of Ebbing, who isn't taking any shit from anybody and whose inner rage simply bars her from seeing any middle road. Mildred Hayes, her character's name, is in a sense a classic American hero, because her life is hit by injustice, but in its face she doesn't simply sit back and wait for the other shoe to drop; she gets up and takes matters into her own hands, she takes charge. Her resolution is universally reaffirming and not uniquely American, of course, and yet it feels powerfully rooted in the Missouri soil here, as well as in the American film tradition.
McDonagh's script is refreshing and exciting throughout, because it circumvents our expectations several times. The classic John Ford-like quality of the injustice plot feels modern and very timely due to McDormand's powerful protagonist and her reckoning with the disappointing police of Ebbing and their violent, racist streak of corruption.
Woody Harrelson (True Detective - season 1 (2014)) is great once again, - SPOILER this time as a sheriff who is terminally ill. Sam Rockwell (Snow Angels (2007)) has the film's most provocative character as the dimwitted, awful cop, - provocative because Three Billboards urges us to see that there's a human being with good sides too, behind the badge of a terrible cop such as Rockwell's man here, whom he plays phenomenally.
Three Billboards is about the nuances between good and bad, and how there's some of both in most people. Despite all its cursing and violence, the film implicitly urges reconciliation among peoples and promotes good and understanding behavior. Caleb Landry Jones (War on Everyone (2016)) is beautiful in the smaller but important part as Ebbing's advertisement manager.
Three Billboards has a stellar ensemble and also benefits from a score from Carter Burwell (Scorchers (1991)), which helps to build the organic, authentic feel of the American South. Another great aspect of it is its central three red billboards, an idea that really captures the audiences' imagination as a tool of activism against injustice.
The nuances of good and bad in Three Billboards are not infinite: There's a border, which is where the murder of Mildred's daughter lies. By that border lies the unforgivable bad, the evil, the entirely cruel actions and callous persons. SPOILER But the film doesn't find these. - The evil has been committed and isn't revisited, (although it might have been relevant), and the perpetrator isn't found. I had to let the film sit for a while to come up with this critique, which is the only one I can form against Three Billboards, which I think is amazing and which I enjoyed thoroughly from beginning to end. It's a real corker, a very funny film and it would probably have robbed its experience of a few laughs and heightened its drama some to have it probe the devastating facts of the murder that spurs the billboards and subsequent actions, - but is might also have raised it beyond question to the status of a masterpiece.
Related post:
2017 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
Watch a trailer for the film here
Cost: 12-15 mil. $ (different reports)
Box office: 121.6 mil. $ and counting
= Mega-hit
[Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri premiered 4 September (Venice International Film Festival) and runs 115 minutes. McDonagh had the idea for the film after seeing billboards about an unsolved crime in the American South. He wrote the parts specifically for McDormand and Rockwell. They drew inspiration for their performances from John Wayne and Lee Marvin, respectively. Ebbing is a fictional town. Shooting took place in North Carolina for 33 days from May - June 2016. The film opened #28 to a 322k $ first opening in 4 theaters, (at a 80k $ average, the 4th strongest of the year), and peaked #7 and in 1,726 cinemas (for now), with a 50.2 mil. $ gross domestically so far. The film has 4 slated coming market releases: Ukraine (1 Mar.), a limited release in China (2 Mar.), Thailand (8 Mar.) and South Korea (15 Mar.). The film has inspired several activist protests with red billboards already: London's Greenfell Tower fire, which cost 77 lives in June 2017, the February 2018 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, which cost 17 lives, and the October 2017 assassination of journalist Daphne Galizia in Malta are some of the injustices without major legal repercussions which has inspired protests shaped over Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri to date. The film is nominated for 7 Oscars: For Best Film, Actress (McDormand), Supporting Actor (Harrelson and Rockwell), Score (Burwell), Original Screenplay (McDonagh) and Editing. It won 4/6 Golden Globe noms, 5/9 BAFTAs, an AFI award, 3 Independent Spirit award nominations, the Best Screenplay prize in Venice and several other honors. The film has been voted into #116 on IMDb's user-generated Top 250, between Batman Begins (2005) and Some Like It Hot (1959). McDormand returns with a voice performance in Isle of Dogs (2018). Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is certified fresh at 92 % with an 8.5 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
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