Individually, not one of these choices qualifies as a disaster. We’re talking about the sort of heartland populated by average-looking people meant to be made poetically interesting by their exotic brides (from Australia!), dying words (“Oscar Wilde”) and symbolically sadistic late-night film taste (one vindictive woman who isn’t Mildred is glued to “Don’t Look Now”). It’s set in the country’s geographical middle, which should trigger a metaphor alert. It’s one of those movies that really do think they’re saying something profound about human nature and injustice. The reason to do any barking - well, the reason for me - is that “Three Billboards” feels so off about so many things. “How come, Chief Willoughby?” asks the last. Frances McDormand plays the woman - her name is Mildred Hayes - and the billboards are the site of her campaign. “Three Billboards” is about a mother determined to humiliate and harass a small-town police force into solving the months-old rape and murder of her teenage daughter.
THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING MISSOURI MOVIE
In 2005, it was “Crash.” This year, the entrant is “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” The movie won four Golden Globes, including best drama, making it a contentious Oscar favorite (the nominations come our way Jan. Last year, that movie was “La La Land.” Two years before that, it was arguably - suddenly - “American Sniper” (winner of nothing especially big, but big in the meaning we ascribed it). And the more love the prize givers throw at it, the more some people want to throw themselves off a cliff. In its own accidental way, it does seem to be saying something about, you know, now. Nonetheless, the movie is even kind of a hit. It gets a bunch of nominations and wins some big prizes, occasionally the biggest ones, and most of the time, people - moviegoers, moviemakers, movie critics - will say they didn’t see it coming, that the enthusiasm for this movie doesn’t make any sense, that the praise being slathered insults how good about a dozen other movies actually are. In the old days we called it a low blow.Sometimes, a movie comes along that appears to take the H.O.V. That’s only one sample of the movie’s allegedly transgressive humor.
Mildred responds by kicking her below the belt. At one point a young woman throws a piece of garbage at her car. If Ebbing had a female population of even, say, 50, wouldn’t most of these women want a murderer caught? Yet McDonagh keeps grinding away at the fact that nearly all the locals loathe Mildred for her take-charge attitude. Mildred seems to be one of only a few women in this town. And even though Three Billboards is intended as a wry cartoon, not a realist tract, it still hangs by a precarious plot thread. This is life in a small American town as viewed by someone who seems to have spent no more than a few drive-through minutes in one. He canters through the movie breezily, and it deflates when he exits.īut Three Billboards is more arch than it is truly smart. Still, McDormand’s no-vanity performance is fun to watch, and Harrelson is terrific too. This is what, in writer’s workshops, is generally called a well-rounded, fascinating character, though it’s really just a belabored one. She says what she thinks, and it’s usually not so nice. Mildred favors one-piece workman’s wear her haircut looks to have been self-inflicted with a Flowbee.
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