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'Three Billboards' is nothing short of a winner. It is a boundlessly entertaining film that keeps you hooked despite a flimsy cultural and ethnically one-note entry. It is about the struggle of a mother- a protest language, which comes as a harbinger of the kind of cinema that does theme-tackling in a structural, surprisingly optimistic way. But that is only the prowess of the writing by Martin McDonagh, who infuses clichés and re-defines the textbook with textures. Frances McDormand is the best actress of this year, with ensuring that Mildred Hayes stays with you, for you, forever. She can easily be one of the soul characters of Hollywood. Sam Rockwell's officer Dixon has a another kind of complex- you may like it or beg to differ. Any ways, his name's quiet bloody hilarious, it sounds like 'dick son'! With all these, Woody Harreison plays officer Willoughby to his prowess: (spoilers ahead) when he dies and one of the billboards of Mrs. Hayes fails, it dials enough emotional resonance and clicks the right buttons of story-telling. Arrive twists like disruption of Dixon and unlawful ways by which the authorities function, and you feel the beat of why the drama has been structured to stay with you.
The ethnical variations mostly arrive to nuanced structures. And that's a considerable strength to undermine the film's a little kinda flawed intent. Watch 'Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri's if you want to see what a fine winning film looks like. It's one of the best films of the decade, and for that, it's essential viewing.0December 13, 19 -
The togetherness of drama and comedy (mostly black) and pitched together like a puzzle by the famous Oscar winning Writer-Director Martin McDonagh. Francis McDormand gives her best performance after 'Fargo'. The film is a fiercely written,fiercely performed tragic comedy consisting of venegence and violence. It accepts the concept of death but embraces it with a choice of revenge.
Francis McDormand plays Mildred Hayes, a middle aged woman who is shattered by the tragic event of her daughter's rape and murder. She is tragicbeaten and alone,works at a gift shop and lives with his son Robbie (Lucas Hedges). Her husband Charlie (Hawkes) left her for a 19 year old woman or girl.(Whatever you say!). The towns police officers have no clue on the case and Mildred rents three unused billboards, just outside town, to remind and to ridicule the officers for no improvements in the case. The chief of the police Mr. Willoughby (played by the terrefic Woody Harrelson) tries hard not to get provoked by the boards but his racist deputy Mr. Dixon(Sam Rockwell) has a different view on that.
The comedy and the hope the film possess is sometimes quickly replaced by rage and suspence that you get reminded of the Coen's "No Country For Old Men"(which also had Woody Harrelson).
Okay here's a little bit of criticism too. The cops in the film sometimes play the good cop sometimes the bad one to the lead mom. (esp. Sam Rockwell). The director tries hard for a delicious twist, the sympathy or the love from a rather arrogant mother and a rather arrogant with racism cop which is thoroughy disturbing. But the differences in the film is held together by a terrefic cast of performance
The mother with courage and pain 'Francis McDormand' holds everything in just the right shape from sense of rage to humour and then quickly to order. But the real breakthrough is the terrefic 'Sam Rockwell' ,overshadowing the mighty 'Woody Harrelson'.
So with all the good and so little of the bad,I rate 'Three Billboards outside Ebbing Missouri' as a positive thing and going with a rating of 6.0April 16, 18