THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI (2017) Review

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is a powerful film staffed with a fantastic cast and well worth your time to take a few hours to kick back and enjoy a fantastic story in this day and age where everything in theaters devolves into violence.

The film was nominated 199 different times for awards and won 113 awards. It was written and directed by Martin McDonagh (In Bruges (2008) and Seven Psychopaths (2012)).

Here's a quick bit of trivia... Martin McDonagh was inspired to write the movie after he saw some billboards about an unsolved crime on a road trip through the Georgia, Florida, Alabama corner. It was filmed in Sylva, NC and there is no such place as Ebbing, Missouri.

The cast is amazing... starring Frances McDormand, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson, Abbie Cornish, Caleb Landry Jones, Kerry Condon, Zeljko Ivanek, Peter Dinklage, Clarke Peters.

"THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI is a darkly comic drama from Academy Award nominee Martin McDonagh (In Bruges). After months have passed without a culprit in her daughter's murder case, Mildred Hayes (Academy Award winner Frances McDormand) makes a bold move, painting three signs leading into her town with a controversial message directed at William Willoughby (Academy Award nominee Woody Harrelson), the town's revered chief of police. When his second-in-command Officer Dixon (Academy Award winner Sam Rockwell), an immature mother's boy with a penchant for violence, gets involved, the battle between Mildred and Ebbing's law enforcement is only exacerbated."

This film catches your attention the moment it starts, and we watch Mildred (McDormand) buy her ad time for the billboards, billboards that call out Sheriff Willoughby (Harrelson) for having not caught her daughter's killer yet. Then we follow the challenges Mildred has to face as most of the entire town rebels against her and her techniques of trying to get justice for her daughter's rape and murder.

The town though, is a bit of your standard, small-minded town, which parleys into the challenges that she faces. She has quite the uphill battle against local law enforcement deputies like Dixon (Rockwell), the neighbors, and what her son, Red (Jones) faces in school.

By the third act, the film turns into a story about redemption and growth, both qualities accredited across the board to multiple characters within the story.

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McDormand, someone whom I've become fond of since her role in the 1996 film, Fargo, excels at her usual perfunctional mode of matter-of-fact presentations that can sometimes be construed as darkly funny.

Harrelson is another actor who can translate a bum or a scholar onto the screen, and his role in this film brings to light the dark side of when the law just can't catch their man. It's more pragmatic with a twist of Harrelson when the time is right.

Sam Rockwell is the character with the most to lose and the most to gain. He's an angry cop who is the antithesist of police brutality and bending the rules to his own favor, despite his mental disadvantage... he's not the brightest and leads with his anger.

Despite calling out these three actors, it does not in any way deminish the contribution of the rest of the cast.

McDormand got an Academy Award, Golden Globe, BAFTA and Critic's Choice Award for Best Actress. Rockwell got an Academy Award, BAFTA, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, Independent Spirit, & Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actor.

The film nabbed over 100+ other awards, so these are just the tip of the iceberg.

It's another fantastic Fox Searchlight film and if you get a chance and you're a fan of any of the cast, this is a wonderful film to experience. It's another hit out of the park for writer/director Martin McDonagh. This man has his pulse on the dramatic flow of life and what stories it can tell on the silver screen.

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