Three Billboards is, quite simply, a horrible film, with a horrible worldview, about horrible people. None of the character arcs feel believable (especially Sam Rockwell’s entirely telegraphed about-turn), and, as McDormand and Rockwell close the film out on some pretentiously Faustian journey for the macguffin of solving the identity of Mildred’s daughter’s killer, it is more emblem for the fact that McDonagh has left us in the hands of two such unlikeable, opaque characters. Of course, these are all only a minor faux pas in their own right, but it reveals McDonagh’s inability to fashion coherency out of the messy dramatic cocktail he’s created.
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I lost count of the amount of times McDonagh uses voiceover or a character reading out a letter to try to progress his story, and there are at least four times where he has a character switch on the TV just at the moment a crucial piece of local news is playing. While he got away with it – just – with In Bruges, his execrable Seven Psychopaths and now this, betray his weakness as a storyteller over a feature length format.Įqually lame is the completely flat, episodic tread of the narrative. He drapes unconvincing character and narrative arcs around his greater desire to shoehorn in sensationalist jokes and action. It betrays McDonagh’s weakness as a storyteller. What is presumably supposed to be a crowd-pleasing critique of the hypocrisy of the Catholic church (and there’s clearly a place for such satire) is completely undercut by the unsubtlety, laziness and lack of nuance in the monologue. The pièce de résistance of godawful speechifying is Mildred Hayes’ attack on the local Father who comes to speak to her in the wake of her controversial advertising campaign. THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI is a darkly comedic drama from Academy Award winner Martin McDonagh (IN BRUGES). All the characters are unintentionally flat and exist as mere mouthpieces for Martin McDonagh’s broad attempt at zeitgeisty social commentary. It is perhaps one of the unsubtlest satires and lamest of American social allegories I’ve ever seen. Review: Really? This? A possible Oscar winner? Hollywood’s meek groupthink mindset and homogenised conception of cinema – as symbolised by the image it presents of itself to the world, the Academy Awards – shouldn’t really come as any surprise, but the way people have been hoodwinked by the early word-of-mouth for this film to overlook its sheer ugliness and dramatic poverty does make the mind boggle. Cast: Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, Caleb Landry Jones, Lucas Hedges, and Amanda Warren Director: Martin McDonagh Synopsis: A mother.
Synopsis: Months after the unsolved rape and murder of her daughter Angela, Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand) bluntly advertises that lack of progress through posters on massive billboards on the outskirts of town, much to the chagrin of most of the townsfolk… Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)Īctors: Frances McDormand, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson A grieving woman named Mildred Hayes puts up three billboards near the town of Ebbing, Missouri to challenge the local police department after her daughters.