It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to truly convey the pain of losing a child, especially when that loss is due to sexual assault. The pain never really goes away, and you begin to question the events leading up to their death, whether it could have been avoided if you had only done something a little different. Then you begin to overthink the last conversations you had with them and whether their last memories of you were not positive ones. People say, never leave angry; you never know when it will be your last conversation with someone. Then, pile on top of that a perceived lack of effort from the local police to find the murderer/rapist. That would fester in you until you felt you needed to do something to get your grief and pain out there and light a fire under some people’s butts.
When we begin Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, we don’t quite know any of this backstory yet. Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand) is driving down a rural back road and passes three back-to-back dilapidated billboards. She looks at them with their remnants of decades-old advertisements still visible and has an idea. At the bottom of each is an advertisement of their own, the name of the company that manages them. As luck would have it, that place is directly across the street from the police station in Ebbing, Missouri. Mildred walks into that place, hands over $5,000 in cash and a description of what she wants these billboards to say. Not long afterwards, a crew is out at the signs putting up her message. Three Billboards, three statements with a single purpose: “RAPED WHILE DYING”, “AND STILL NO ARRESTS?”, ‘HOW COME, CHIEF WILLOUGHBY?”.
Seven months prior, Angela, Mildred’s teenage daughter, was raped and murdered while walking into town. The police found no evidence beyond a DNA sample that matched no one in the nationwide database. Despite their best efforts, they were unable to solve the case, and it has gone cold. Mildred, frustrated with what she sees as a lack of effort, has placed these billboards up to make a statement and perhaps even light a fire. She certainly has done that.
Not long afterwards, the news runs a story on the billboards, interviewing Mildred in front of the them. Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) pays her a visit, insisting that those billboards are not fair and that the police have done everything possible to find Angela’s killer. Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell), one of his officers, goes a step further, harassing, then finally assaulting Red Welby (Caleb Landry Jones), the man who sold the advertising space to Mildred, throwing him out a second-story window and putting him in the hospital.
Chief Willoughby, who is dying from pancreatic cancer, renews his efforts on the case, but it gets him nowhere. When his condition worsens, he takes his own life, ending it on his own terms while leaving behind a wife and two young daughters; but not before he uses some of his own money to pay for another month’s rent on the billboards and sends out a letter to Mildred, letting her know that her billboards were not the reason for his suicide. But while she may know that, not everyone in town does, and there is plenty of blame and assumptions going around. Later, someone sets fire to those billboards, and Mildred blames the police for that, so she sets fire to the police station late one night, unaware that Dixon is inside at the time.
If this were an episode of Columbo or CSI, we could reasonably expect things to wrap up nicely in the end. This is not like that, though. The ending really put some people off and may have soured some voters out of selecting this film for the Best Picture of the year at the Academy Awards, paving the way for Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water to win. While there is nothing inherently wrong with that film, it doesn’t hit nearly as hard as Three Billboards does. This is one of those films that we jokingly refer to as the “Feel bad movie of the year,” and it earns that reputation. We are not meant to leave the theater feeling uplifted and satisfied that justice has been served. We’re supposed to think about what justice really is and who is in the right here.
On first glance, that would seem obvious. Mildred is just demanding the police “do their job” and find her daughter’s killer. But what she is asking is outside of the law. She wants everyone fingerprinted, DNA tested, and have all that info in a database so that it can be referenced should a crime be committed. That may seem like an ideal solution, but it violates privacy laws and treats everyone like a criminal. It’s also not feasible. This attitude of hers plays into the finale where equally questionable behavior comes into play.
Her relationship with Chief Willoughby is one of the major highlights of the film, too. It’s antagonistic, for sure, especially when he tries to play on her sympathies by telling her that he is dying. She throws that back at him, telling him that she is fully aware of his condition and that that doesn’t matter. But later, when that comes back and literally hits her in the face, she shifts into mother mode, and we see that she really does care. She may be bitter and angry, but she is not a monster.
Francis McDormand rides a fine line between sympathetic and unsympathetic. Through a combination of how her character is written and how she is playing it, we never quite stop being on her side, though there are some choices that she makes that are taking things too far. But even as she is throwing Molotov cocktails at the police station, we also see that she only intends to burn the place, thinking she is retaliating for her billboards being burned down. She made multiple attempts to verify that the place was empty. By sheer stupid luck, Dixon was not only in there after hours but also had his headphones in and didn’t hear the cocktails smashing against the facade and the building erupting into flames until it was nearly too late.
We don’t get a good sense of what Mildred was like before Angela was killed. There is just one scene showing their relationship, and it is perhaps the weakest moment in the entire picture. This moment feels scripted rather than natural, and it is possible that what we are seeing is filtered through her eyes and doesn’t represent what really happened. In this moment, they are having an argument about letting Angela borrow the car, which leads to her deciding to walk instead. It ends with her yelling about how she hopes she gets raped on the way into town, and Mildred yelling back, “I hope you get raped on the way, too.” This scene is not only uncomfortable to watch but also is too on the nose. This is the old saying “Be careful what you wish for…” ramped up to 11.
There is very little joy to be found in this film. Even scenes like when Chief Willoughby and his wife take their two daughters out for a day trip to the river for fishing, it is punctuated with the following scene where it is made clear this trip was to provide the girls with one last happy memory with their father before he kills himself. Mildred has the opportunity to spend an evening with a man who is in love with her. This man, James (Peter Dinklage), takes her out to dinner, but it is obvious that she thinks nothing of him even though he provided her with an alibi when she set fire to the police station. The evening is ruined by an appearance from her ex-husband and his 19-year-old girlfriend. But it is also ruined by Mildred’s obvious discomfort with being seen with James. His monologue in response will cut you to the bone. Peter Dinklage is a tremendous actor, and you can hear the hurt in his voice when he responds to her. Mildred has done some awful things during the course of this movie, but this one moment feels easily the worst.
If there is one character in desperate need of a redemptive arc, it is Dixon. Sam Rockwell is usually a lovably goofy presence in films, but here he oozes danger. This is not like his creepy portrayal of Billy the Kid in The Green Mile, but it is filled with racism, ignorance, and a festering violence that he only occasionally is able to hold in check. We’re told he tortured a Black man in prison, yet he is still allowed to be an officer of the law. It takes throwing Red Welby out of a second-floor window and beating on him in front of the new Chief of Police to finally get him fired and even then his fellow officers are sympathetic.
Circumstances leave him badly burned later, and this will lead to his quasi-redemptive arc. I will not spoil the ending, but that ending wouldn’t be possible without him. He may not have solved Angela’s murder, but he puts in place actions that may or may not allow Mildred to get some semblance of “justice”. For some, this sudden change leading into the ending will be unsatisfactory; it’s definitely not the ending most people expected.
Don’t expect this film to end with everything wrapped up neatly with a bow. Life isn’t really like that, and neither is this film. It’s a bold and daring choice to end the way that it does, but it was the right decision. It also doesn’t really tell us what is going to happen, only what will probably happen. It’s the perfect note to end this film on, even if it is one many people will strongly dislike. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri will not appeal to just anybody; but for me at least, it was the best film released in 2017, even if the Academy didn’t vote the same way.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: Graham Broadbent, Pete Czernin, and Martin McDonagh
Best Actress: Frances McDormand (won)
Best Supporting Actor: Woody Harrelson
Best Supporting Actor: Sam Rockwell (won)
Best Original Screenplay: Martin McDonagh
Best Film Editing: Jon Gregory
Best Original Score: Carter Burwell
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Release Date: November 10, 2017
Running Time: 115 Minutes
Rated R
Starring: Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, Abbie Cornish, John Hawkes, and Peter Dinklage
Directed by: Martin McDonagh
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