(Frances
McDormand)
Fine performances from Frances McDormand,
Sam Rockwell and Woody Harrelson stand out in a movie that sparkles but doesn’t
always convince. (Review: Patrick Compton - 7/10)
All movies come with a “believability
factor” – the important issue of whether you naturally suspend your disbelief
watching a medium that you know employs a high degree of artifice.
Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri – a big Oscar contender –
undoubtedly scores highly as entertainment, but is less convincing as a
realistic portrait of a small-town community and its various inhabitants.
McDonagh, formerly best known for his
superior gangster comedy/drama In Bruges,
is, like his brother John (Calvary), a playwright who dips into cinema from
time to time. In some respects he’s hit the jackpot here in this violent coal black
comedy-drama about a woman, Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand), who campaigns to
get the local police chief’s attention after her daughter is raped and
murdered.
We join the action seven months after the
killing, with the daughter’s assailant yet to be identified. Mildred, bitter
and frustrated, decides to publicise her feelings, plastering the following
messages on three abandoned billboards on an obscure side road: Still No
Arrests? How Come Chief Willoughby? Raped While Dying.
These messages, not surprisingly, cause an
uproar in the community. It would have been easy for McDonagh to have created a
monster in the character of Willoughby (Woody Harrelson), but that is not what
happens. Willoughby, in fact, is probably the most rounded and sympathetic
figure in the movie. He comes over as a good man who suffers from anguish over
the police failure to track down the killer. He also suffers in another way
after being diagnosed with terminal cancer.
McDonagh throws a number of other highly
visible characters into his melodrama, including a dumb racist cop, Jason Dixon
(Sam Rockwell), who combines a high degree of unpleasantness with a bizarre
comic presence and even a space for some kind of future redemption.
In his career, the Irish writer-director
has repeatedly created a succession of oddball characters and enjoyed watching
them ping off each other. While the result is frequently entertaining, the
overall chemical mix doesn’t always result in a feeling of authenticity. From scene
to scene Billboards entertains, but
deep down I didn’t believe what I was seeing, not least because some of the
film’s later plotting is deeply unconvincing.
McDormand, who has admitted that she based
her performance on John Wayne, is the ever-present focal point as she pursues
vengeance, but while she is apparently a front-runner for the Oscar for best
actress, her flinty, foul-mouthed effort simply doesn’t compare with her
masterful performance as “Marjee”, the pregnant Minnesota police chief in the
Coen brothers’ masterpiece, Fargo.
Three
Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is showing at
the Gateway, Pavilion, Midlands and Watercrest malls. – Patrick Compton
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