McDormand leads a trio of incredible performances

Rating: 9/10 (27 November 2017)

Director Martin McDonagh is a playwright by main trade, so he directs, and writes, films with great, pointed, nimble dialogue. He wrote and directed "In Bruges," and "Seven Psychopaths." He outdoes himself with this script, which is chock full of acid repartee and blistering verbal exchanges. The film tells a story weighted with heavy emotional freight, but does so with so many hilarious moments of dark comedy that when the downer emotional interludes roll around again, you're trying to catch up and reset your face: laughter clouds into sober reflection of harsh situations, then here comes the laughter again.
That pendulum effect is thanks to three masterful performances: Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell, caught up in the festering pain over a violent murder, in a (fictional) small Missouri town. McDormand plays Mildred Hayes, divorcée, whose daughter was killed 7 months earlier, and her disgust with the lack of progress by the local police in investigating the crime eventually boils over into protest and outright militancy. McDormand's set-jaw grit here is captivating. It's been 20 years since her Oscar for "Fargo," and this role makes her a shoe-in for another nomination. You cheer her on in every move she makes, even when she crosses the line into vigilantism. Fed up with waiting for her daughter's killers to be caught, she rents three decrepit billboards on a sleepy stretch of blacktop outside town, and has them emblazoned with an accusatory question aimed squarely at the town's Chief of Police Willoughby (Harrelson, intelligent, wryly funny, genuinely principled, and going through a personal crisis of his own). A member of his force, Officer Dixon (Rockwell, playing the dullard, yokel, racist cop routine to drawling, violent, moronic perfection, lords but he's good), takes the billboards as a frontal attack on the police force, a slight he has no intention of letting slide, despite the fact Mildred is clearly within her free speech rights in having posted the message they carry.
The supporting cast are also great. Caleb Landry Jones plays Red, the billboard ad salesman, young, hesitant, a bit vulnerable. Lucas Hedges plays Mildred's son, Robbie, mortified at his mom's activist behavior, but ultimately on her side, and also deeply damaged by his sister's killing. The police desk sergeant is cleverly played by Zeljko Ivanek, he frequently winces over Dixon's astonishing stupidity. Sandy Martin plays Dixon's ethically challenged hick mother with notes of frightening credibility. Peter Dinklage puts in a sly performance as the "town midget," a very decent, smart guy who befriends Mildred. Short of stature or not, Dinklage is one very good actor. John Hawkes, from "Deadwood," plays Mildred's sour ex husband, he turns in some well-charged scenes. Clark Peters, from "The Wire," plays a senior cop who takes over the Ebbing police station after a series of events has sent it into chaos. Nick Searcy plays a venal, condescending local priest, whom Mildred totally verbally stiff-arms, comparing him to a gang member and inviting him to finish his tea and then "get the f--k out of my kitchen."
There are a couple of nit-picky details in the plot that make no sense (the full-size fire extinguisher just happening to be handy in the station wagon, and the threatening, but disconnected, menace of a stranger's visit to Mildred's gift shop), but they're minor annoyances in the scheme of a script brimming with emotional intelligence, a rarity in modern movie houses. The partnership that develops at the end is also extremely odd, and their plan is more than slightly vague, not to mention morally flawed, but the film's basic message seems to override that by earnestly saying: grief can destroy you, but grief coupled with inaction will drive you insane, and then destroy you. Great movie.