Fargo-minus the snow

Rating: 10/10 (21 February 2018)

Frances McDormand seems to be the perfect cast for tough women with a mission, which goes both for Fargo and this one. Technically, when it comes to character, you could almost describe this as Fargo minus the snow. McDormand plays Mildred, an embittered woman on a quest to find her daughter's murderer. When the local police makes no progress, she decides to take things into her own hands and upsets everyone in the little town of Ebbing along the way, especially through the provocative red billboards asking questions that sheriff Willoughby(Woody Harrelson) isn't really trying to solve the case at all. The movie turns into a gallery of colorful characters, from the man who rents Mildred the billboards, to James (Peter Dinklage), a midget who put Mildred into her place at a dinner date that wrong. Although it's Sam Rockwell's cop Dixon who a wins you over quite easily, it's his beer-drinking mother who is left the biggest impression on me as the archetype of white trash almost bordering on comedy.