So the forgiveness and forbearance McDonagh sometimes symbolizes with small gestures are correspondingly hard won.Īmid this overall web of positive, unsentimental values, though, darker threads are intertwined. They wound each other profoundly, sometimes emotionally, sometimes physically. This is not an ensemble of small-town folk who merely get on one another’s nerves. Villains prove redeemable and reconciliation possible, even in the most luridly extreme circumstances. As the story progresses, however, glimmers of hope begin to shine through. Mildred’s teen son, Robbie (Lucas Hedges), and her ex-husband, Charlie (John Hawkes), also become embroiled in the clash.Īlong with a Southern Gothic tone and eccentric but dignified minor characters who might have been lifted from the pages of that connoisseur of oddity, Catholic author Flannery O’Connor, McDonagh infuses “Three Billboards” - initially at least - with pitch-black comedy and a bleak outlook on the human condition. This conflict gradually draws in Willoughby’s violence-prone second-in-command, Officer Dixon (Sam Rockwell) Red Welby (Caleb Landry Jones), the mild-mannered head of the advertising company that owns the billboards’ and James (Peter Dinklage), a dwarf who sells used cars and carries a secret torch for Mildred. Mildred’s action sets off a small-scale civil war in the community. She specifically targets the small force’s widely loved chief, William Willoughby (Woody Harrelson). Enraged by the stalled investigation into the gruesome rape and murder of her daughter, Mildred arranges to rent the structures of the title and has them plastered with signs attacking the local police. McDormand plays embittered divorced mom Mildred Hayes. But a plotline justifying suicide in some circumstances as well as a vicious diatribe against the Catholic priesthood ultimately place this picture beyond the pale. Taken together with Frances McDormand’s majestic turn as this emotional dynamo of a film’s tormented main character, these qualities would normally permit endorsement of it for a circumscribed group of adult moviegoers, despite its many seamy elements in dialogue and action. NEW YORK (CNS) - The dramatic power and serious artistic intent that mark writer-director Martin McDonagh’s “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” (Fox Searchlight) are too obvious to be denied.
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