A Troubled Movie for Our Troubled Times

Rating: 8/10 (13 December 2017)

The night before I saw "Three Billboards...", my wife and I were talking about how surprised we are that, with all of the hot button issues swirling around America's cultural conversation right now, very few of them are being addressed in movies. Then I watched Martin McDonagh's (who ironically isn't even American) angry, sad, and haunting film and feel like it, along with "Get Out," also released this year, will be remembered as a film that captured a specific cultural moment better than many others playing in theaters at the same time.
"Three Billboards..." is I think a movie whose sum is better than any of its parts. It's problematic, primarily in the uneasy tone McDonagh tries only fitfully successfully to create. It feels too often like someone trying to impersonate the Coen brothers but not quite getting it. Early attempts at dark humor fall flat, and eventually the screenplay just gives up trying to be funny altogether, and that's when the movie is at its best. McDonagh also suffers from a lack of discipline, and issues are addressed, like black distrust of the police or religious hypocrisy, that don't feel completely integrated into the movie's themes. But overall this didn't bother me as much as it might otherwise have, because more than anything this movie is about that undefined anger that seems to be pervading our culture right now and makes its target whatever happens to be in front of us in the moment. The two main characters in this film are overcome with a sense of helpless rage, much of it legitimate and targeted, some of it not, and both are faced with the same decision -- do they continue to feed it, or do they let it go? The way they and the movie answer that question is disturbing in a way that sneaks up on you and gets in your head. I realized days later that I was still thinking about this movie.
Frances McDormand and Woody Harrelson are excellent. Sam Rockwell is good with what he's given to do, but one wishes his character had been better written. As it is he's a caricature up to a point, and then he does a complete turnabout that comes out of thin air and feels like a case of satisfying character development being sacrificed for the sake of plot mechanics.
Like "Get Out," time will tell how well "Three Billboards..." holds up, but for now it's one of the few movies that has its finger on the pulse of what's happening to America, and that's enough.
Grade: A