As good as you might expect, but...

Rating: 8/10 (21 July 2018)

A small town (especially a small town in America) is a specific place, and British-Irish writer-director Martin McDonagh takes full advantage of this in his renowned and much-awarded "Three Billboards..." However, Ebbing, Missouri does not exist, and McDonagh actually went a long way from Missouri to film in Sylva, North Carolina, where the population is apparently about 2600.
That begins to tell you something about this movie, but back - for now - to the concept of everybody knowing everybody else, being at school with them, raised with them, knowing their strengths and weaknesses, family background and everything else. And McDonagh's awareness of this and his ability to build it into his film is where the brilliance shones through. "Three Billboards" repeatedly gains a description as part "dark comedy" that was hard for this reviewer to discern at all, but is moreover a disappointing oversimplification. For the joy here is not an amazing Francis McDormand as Mildred Hayes being perpetually (and non-comedically) rude and violent and unpleasant and at times near-psychopathic to the cops in her town (perhaps somewhat justifiably, but anyway); but rather the way that she at times shows sympathy for them, and even in fact teams up with them. This is not especially funny either, but is just how it would be. Pure hate can't work/be sustained in a town of 2600, where people have put up with each others' good and bad for years. So if something new-bad-shocking happens something has to give so that a new balance can talk hold in the community, and it is McDonagh's genius to be able to portray that, as well as McDormand's huge skill to ensure the tough-as-old-boots facade slip just occasionally.
Of course both director and lead star are helped out greatly with this by SUPERB work by Woody Harrelson as the Police Chief, and Sam Rockwell and Zeljko Ivanek as other cops. Peter Dinklage is also interesting in his role, who is a pretty blameless character surrounded by people who are certainly to be blamed for what they have done.
And that brings me to the downsides here - and the more you think about them, the more they get to you. It is no secret/not much of a spoiler to mention that Mildred is a heroine because she has been terribly wronged and permanently wounded by the loss of her daughter in awful circumstances, and the failure of the Police to do much about it; but her behaviour at worst is unheroic in the extreme (also occasionally unrealistic); while the person she holds most responsible - Harrelson's Willoughby - emerges repeatedly as heroic. This is a classy twist, and within the bounds of acceptability. In contrast, a willingness to forgive the Sam Rockwell character for some greater good IS indeed potentially realistic in a small-town context, but it's also PLAIN WRONG. We are looking in on the world of Ebbing from the outside, and we know that there is bad stuff going on there, and we can only be uncomfortable with any accommodation of that.
Which brings me to the most telling point.
I believe I am not the only person in the world to have come to this film considering it was basically a true story. But it isn't.
The best we can say is that it resembles the story of James Fulton - the FATHER of murder victim Kathy Page, and the funder of billboards and signs condemning police in Vidor, Texas. Now Kathy suffered a very unpleasant death, but it seems the yet-more-far-reaching perversion and unpleasantness surrounding the death of our movie's victim Angela Hayes is basically out of the heads of the makers.
It is therefore their (ir)responsibility to depict a crime that is presumably not inconceivable, but beyond the capacity of my mind to conceive of. Presumably pretty much every other audience member for "Three Billboards" is in the same boat.
For me that takes the edge off this film, brilliant though it indeed is - hence the 8, rather than the 10.