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| Fox Searchlight Pictures |
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017, directed by Martin McDonagh. U.S.A., U.K. English, Color, 115 minutes) We cringe to think justice has not been served when a crime is committed against ourselves or loved ones and no one pays for it. It's no secret that the legal system can move at a glacial pace, with rigidity and luck to ensure that the perpetrator is rightfully convicted. Sometimes the cops can be lucky and find their suspect in a quick amount of time. Sometimes it can takes weeks, months, years, or even never. We don't like feeling wronged having someone get away with a crime.
This is the outline for "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri", a universal tale about society's expectations for the police to do something when it seems like they're not trying at all. "Three Billboards" balances that drive between social justice and police capabilities with dangerously sharp quips that tackle the process and the emotional turmoils of dealing with it all. There's a stark humanism here that has you rooting for the civilians as much as the police in equal amounts of laughs and heartbreak. Needless to say, it's one of the most satisfying movie-going experiences of the year.
Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand) is the epitome of everything we feel in this hypersensitive world. Where others shy away from a problem, she attacks... viciously. We wish we could be like her at times. Renting out billboards to question the effectiveness of Police Chief William Willoughby to solve the rape and murder of her daughter is the most loud use of nonviolent protest I've ever seen, and damn effective. She wants what is right for her and her daughter, even when Willoughby and his department are doing what they are legally able to do working with the evidence they have available to them. Hayes doesn't want to hear that. She wants the case to be solved no matter what it takes. Don't we all? Hayes is that simmering frustration that blows up when dealing with the criminal justice system.
Earlier this year "Detroit" took a scathing jab at police to be one-dimensional, crazy, deranged, racist beings masquerading as servants of peace who are anything but. "Three Billboards" lets the police be three dimensional while also painting them as being superior beings in a small town that doesn't matter. It's something you'll see anywhere — especially in some of the departments in my area. Police officers in smaller towns may have a chip on their shoulder for being high and mighty while being fractured by the obstruction of doing good because of nothing to work on. Especially in Officer Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell), the drunk, living-at-home sad sack of an excuse of a police officer whose ambitions are bigger than he has ever worked to realize. He's the image of what many cop haters imagine, and Mildred beats down on him for it.
There is no way to watch this movie without being absorbed with McDormand as Mildred. She might be the mechanic suit-wearing gift shop worker, but she is a one-woman wrecking ball who will stab a dentist and kick high school kids in the groin if she feels disrespected. It's a performance that makes you wait anxiously to see what she'll say and do next. When she's not spewing her insults and jokes she waits patiently and quietly as if the only reason to talk is to sting someone with her acid tongue. She towers over the insecure Rockwell as Dixon. They're both aggressive personalities with soft spots, and especially for Dixon, it becomes quite heartfelt when he decides to turn his life around for the better. They worked really well as enemies, and, briefly as compadres, to right a wrong.
And while I enjoyed watching McDormand and Rockwell I wish there were even more of the former. She was so unpredictable, courageous and funny that I could have watched her all day. Her flashy moments dry up following a crucial scene involving Chief Willoughby which serves as a catalyst for things to come. It's dramatic and takes the comedic edge off right when I wanted Mildred to keep charging full steam ahead.
"Three Billboards" resonates as a way to reflect on our own problems with law and order and how we go about fixing them. It's vigilantism that uses free speech as a weapon instead of violence (well, for the most part). This was a more comforting film than that dreadful "Detroit" because it was a piece of escapism fueled by our fantasies to shame others, and it made me feel good through and through.
Rating: A-
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