troubling and unsettling

Rating: 6/10 (6 January 2018)

I am a fan of frances mcdormand,so i went to this film hoping to see a performance rivaling sally hawkins in "the shape of water." no contest: sally hawkins is transcendent; mcdormand is good. well, in one scene she is great: the remembered fight with her daughter is fantastic. blows away any of the highly praised mother-daughter scenes in "lady bird."
the role of dixon's mother is unpleasant but extremely well acted.
on the other hand, the plot twist makes no sense. we see a vicious psychopath boast of killing a girl - almost certainly the daughter - then worry that he was overheard. turns out he is not the killer. ok, novel twist, but if he is just boasting, not the killer, why was he so worried about being overheard? and we see him shockingly violent twice, yet his fingerprints are in no law enforcement database, local or national. clean record? not likely.
why does chief willoughby write detailed letters telling mildred but not his wife that mildred is not responsible for his suicide? the only reason i can see is to set up a scene where the wife is furious at mildred. pretty catty for the kind chief willoughby.
i have seen lucas hedges in 3 films in the past year, and he is least compelling here.
i was not moved by woody harrelson's portrayal. yes, i understood that he was supposed to be a good man and a decent person, but i didn't feel it. clarke peters as the replacement police chief was palpably decent; harrelson was not. seemed like the wrong actor for the role. for a decent police chief, i think of chris cooper in "lone star," a great frances mcdormand film.
mcdonagh sure enjoys killing off good guys (cf in bruges), but he doesn't do it nearly as well as george r.r. martin.
the film is bleak and repeatedly, gratuitously violent and malicious, without justice triumphing in the end - much like "in bruges," which i hated for the same reason.