Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
2017
***½
Director: Martin McDonagh
Cast: Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, Abbie Cornish, John Hawkes, Peter Dinklage, Željko Ivanek, Caleb Landry Jones, Samara Weaving, Kerry Condon
Mildred Hayes is an embittered mother who rents three billboards outside the town of Ebbing to bring attention to the unsolved rape and murder of her 17-year-old daughter. This brings her into conflict with Jason Dixon, a heavy-drinking, short-tempered redneck cop. Martin McDonagh's entertaining, foul-mouthed dark comedy offers a slice of small-town Americana, as imagined by an English-born Irishman. The cast is amazing, with the exception of the miscast Abbie Cornish, who plays a young and glamorous Australian woman who somehow ended up marrying a small town sheriff some 20 years her senior. Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell both won Academy Awards for their performances. Most of the acting is in fact so strong that it almost manages to conceal the screenplay's many problems with its themes and plotting (rape and murder are not the only crimes that go unpunished in Ebbing). Furthermore, McDonagh's characters are not particularly nuanced. Even the two protagonists are often painted in black and white, and both can be unpleasant.
