Martin McDonough kills the cat: Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri movie review

Rating: 10/10 (29 November 2017)

Grief is an odd feeling to capture in writing, painting, or even in movies. Often times the sad part of grief is so emphasized upon that we forget about the anger, the anxiety and the unease that it carries. Perhaps because anger is associated with ugliness and rage, our heroes don't stay angry for long. They quickly get inspired and fight back to reach the happy ending where skies are once again blue, and grass is green. But anger is as relatable a feeling as hope or love, it clouds our judgments and pushes to limits we cannot imagine. I love Martin McDonough's work so much because ha challenges himself to use all that raw feeling to make art. There are no good or bad characters is Ebbing, they all try to cope with their life in their own ways and it's from depth of these characters (and not boundaries of movie genres) that we get sorrow, empathy and of course loads of dark comedy. The less you know about this feature going in, the better. The movie opens with Francis McDormand driving down a lonely road as the camera follows her from outside of the car. We see her looking up at something in front of her as she slows down, and when the car stops, we see the reflection of an old billboard in the windshield. We see the moment of her decision making all in one simple clever image. No cuts back and forth to clue us as to what she's looking at and of no lazy exposition. She decides to use the billboards to send a message to the chief of police in Missouri, asking what happened to her daughter's murdered. There is a book about how You can write a screenplay that you can successfully sell to Hollywood called "Save the cat" which outlines plot points and where the should happen, to generate a certain amount of forced empathy out of you for the characters in the film. You've seen the result in every Marvel movie, every blockbuster and more recently in "Justice League" and as fan, I find them to be more and more boring every time. Studios dare not to take risks, and continue to pander to our lowest common denominators as the audience so they can make a buck. My little rant on "save the cat" connects to "Three Billboards" because McDonough is aware of the audience expectations and he deliberately uses that advantage to surprise us and control our feelings. After all a director is only directing our attention during his film and not what we would like, and expect to see. This self-awareness is a double edged sword, as it can fire back for being too cheesy, to self-referential and too full of itself, but Three Billboards manages to walk the thin line perfectly, and you as the audience are lost in this movie's world because as you feel like you know these characters, and so you care! Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri has the best screenplay of the year, it has the best Female lead and best supporting male in Francis McDormand and Sam Rockwell, it is one of the darkest, and also one of the funniest films I've seen in years. Martin McDonough continues to build and own his tone as a dark comedic writer and my prediction is, very soon, just like the Quentin Tarantinos and Wes Andersons of this world he will be known for his own genre of film. Go watch this movie now!
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