An abysmal problematic poorly written film, reminiscent of Crash (2004) in its racism

Rating: 2/10 (20 January 2018)

This film is a mess. Frances McDormand carries this whole film on her back and yet her character is a complete caricature. She wears the same blue coveralls for the entire film and her anger is so heightened that she can be very accurately likened to Charles Bronson from Death Wish. She is not a character and McDormand imbues the only scrap of interest to be had in this film herself with absolutely no help from the preachy wheedling script. This is to say that she is not compelling and her righteous motherly rage is reduced to a tasteless hyper-violent farce with a ghastly rape as a catalyst for this pisspoor plot. No character motivation makes sense after the first third of the film. Why the hell does Sam Rockwell's character (an awful one-note performance by the way) not get immediately thrown in jail for throwing Caleb Landry Jones out a window? Why are we treated to the trite final moments of Woody Harrelson's one-dimensional lovable country hunk cop only to learn that he paid off the money needed to keep the billboards smearing his name standing? Why is a cartoonish racist cop (Sam Rockwell) the hero of film and completely redeemed of his grotesque racism and habit of torturing black people by deciding to limply and moronically seek out McDormand's daughters killer all because he reads a motivational letter written for no apparent reason by Woody Harrelson who while alive does nothing but berate Rockwell for being a total dunderhead? Oh and he gets handed a glass of orange juice by Caleb Landry Jones so he immediately becomes a good guy. Also how do you extract an accurate sample of DNA out from under your fingernails as Sam Rockwell does, scratching a suspect and in turn getting the shit beaten out of him? Could he perhaps just take the saliva from the rapist's beer bottle after the braggadocios rapist leaves? Martin McDonagh is clearly an awful screenwriter, as his Crash-esque racist white cop redemption is hammered home with a completely unrealistic amount of suffering doled out for Rockwell, who ultimately is the star of this dumpster fire. McDormand is peripheral ultimately and her anguish feels like the object of a joke, as if McDonagh is sneering at her pain with on the nose scenes like the one where we see McDormand's final conversation with her daughter which literally ends with her yelling, "I hope you get raped!" Subtlety, very tact.
This movie is also incredibly problematic. The African-American actors Darrell Britt-Gibson, Clarke Peters, and Amanda Warren are given no compelling characterization and are used as a backdrop. Clarke Peters's Abercrombie exists only to counter the racism of Rockwell and Amanda Warren's Denise exists only to get thrown in jail for fabricated charges, only to emerge all smiles despite McDormand being responsible for this. Also there is an unbelievably cringey scene in which McDormand repeatedly goads Sam Rockwell by saying the n-word. Everybody laughed in the theater but it was completely forced and unfunny and only highlighted McDonagh's treatment of Rockwell's racism as a character quirk as opposed to as a rottenness. And don't get me started on the godawful ending in which McDormand and burnt racist cop drive into the sunset to kill a completely random rapist? Where is the logic there? There is none, no believable motivation anywhere in this godawful film. This really is 2017's version of Crash.