Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Playwright Martin McDonagh has brought his caustic wit to America. This is his second feature to be featured in the States (Seven Psychopaths was the first) but this film is rooted in the heartland, a fictional town called Ebbing, Missouri.

In The Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (an unwieldy title) McDonagh writes about the conflict between the mother of a murder victim and the local police department. In trailers, it appears as if the argument is favored toward the woman (played by Frances McDormand). But as the film goes on, we realize that defining the protagonist is not easy, since she is definitely in the wrong and her combatant, so to speak, Woody Harrelson, the chief of police, is blameless, and then leaves the picture halfway through.

As the title suggests, this film is about three billboards that are in disrepair on a largely unused road. McDormand, still seething after months of futile investigation into her daughter's murder, decides to rent the billboards and put up antagonistic, yet perfectly legal, messages to Harrelson and his department. Harrelson explains that he did everything he could, but the DNA has not matched anyone and there were no witnesses. McDormand doesn't care.

The person she riles up most is Sam Rockwell, playing a racist and dim-witted member of the force. He's angrier than Harrelson is, and plots with his mother (a wonderful Sandy Martin) about how to get at McDormand. McDormand is basically fighting her battle alone, as even her son (Lucas Hedges) and ex-husband (John Hawkes) are against her.

I thought the first half or so of the film was brilliant, as it shifted from comedy to tragedy, and sometimes in the same scene--just like life. But, especially when Harrelson leaves the film, it starts to unravel. Rockwell becomes the emotional heart of the film, and his character, though given a redemptive arc, is too cliched. And it does seem to be the worst police department ever--Rockwell beats a man senseless and throws him out a window, but does not seemed to be charged, and McDormand firebombs the police station with Molotov cocktails and despite a flimsy alibi is also not charged. Criminals, here's your place--this town can't solve anything.

McDonagh is a great playwright, especially his trilogy set in the Western Islands of Ireland. I'm not sure he has the Missouri thing down. Eventually the characters seem to talking at each other instead of too each other. The Hawkes character is a bad guy because he has a nineteen-year-old girlfriend. Peter Dinklage is thrown in as an admirer of McDormand's for some midget jokes. The one scene that really works is a flashback to the last words McDormand has with her daughter. That scene really stings.

With some rewrites this could be a great movie, as it is it's just okay. McDormand, despite playing a character who needs therapy badly, has locked down an Oscar nomination. Rockwell is getting buzz, but I think the better work is turned in by Harrelson, who actually seems like a real human being and not a cartoon character.