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Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri

Saw this little gem at the Moonlight Outdoor Cinema in Kings Park with sister, Mandy and fly-by-nighter, Liam (free tickets courtesy of sis - cheers!). Not the ideal way to watch a film, what with the picnic folk popping up to empty their chardonnay bladders and the food stall people cleaning grills around half-way through, but these piffles didn't detract from the film itself. This is only Martin McDonagh's third feature, following In Bruges from 2008 and Seven Psychopaths in 2012. Prolific is not a word to describe his output. Pretty bloody excellent is. Well, that's three words. In fairness, I didn't love Psycopaths as much as Bruges, which is brilliant, but Billboards may just pip it.

I'd say this is a black comedy but that seems too flip. While there are some lines and situations designed to draw laughs, most of the real chuckles are reactions to barbarity and apparent hopelessness. And these are not belly laughs. The film revolves around Frances McDormand's character Mildred Hayes, whose daughter's rape and murder still hasn't been solved after several months. This sets up the theme of justice and the need for 'closure' and it's really satisfying that there actually IS no satisfaction to be had. Not in the way most films would be searching for anyway.

Liam noted that around half-way through (near the food stall grill scraping) there's a moment that takes the film in a completely different direction. It stays within its narrative boundaries but this moment makes the viewer readjust somewhat. Where do the sympathies lie now? The whole idea of Three Billboards is to mess with the black and white, leave us thinking, not just about what these people are feeling, but why as well. And the ending is one of the best I've seen in a long while.

A word or two on the roundly excellent cast. McDormand holds her emotions in check, as is required of her character but she really shows her class in the tiny deviations. Someone coughs blood on her and she suddenly becomes compassionate. There are flashes of guilt and fear but these are subsumed quickly by her steel. She's outstanding here. Harrelson is very good as the town police chief, as are Caleb Landry Jones, Abbie Cornish Peter Dinklage, John Hawkes and Zeljko Ivanek (who has been in all three McDonagh films) but the other great performance is by Sam Rockwell. Olly Richards of Empire Magazine once talked on their podcast about "27 percenters". These are actors who raise the quality of a film 27 percent simply by being in it. I can't remember who exactly they were discussing when it came up but I seem to recall the name William Fichtner. I'm probably wrong. Well, in Three Billboard they've got a 27 percenter, which, by my maths, puts this film over 100%. Weird. Rockwell is better here than I've seen him before; pathetic, funny, sad, pitiable, brave. His character has some issues and there's a key scene where he reads a letter that underlines the change that needs to occur just before something momentous actually does. Sorry for the deliberate sleight. Just see this film and you'll understand what I'm on about.

See also:

Certainly McDongah's In Bruges (2008) but also one of his brother, John Michael McDonagh's films, Calvary (2014). Talented family.

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