Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri, Review: Rape, murder and other black grey comedy

Outdoor advertising is no longer so called. The 21^st century buzz-word is ‘Out-of-Home medium’, OOH. There have been many claims about the efficacy of such advertising, but no one has so far professed that it can help galvanise a police force into speedy action. Welcome to Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri, a 115-minute R-rated homicide drama that is reportedly dropping many clues along the Oscar trail.

Dialogue: Rape-murder victim’s mother, Mildred Hayes, to Billboard agency man: What's the law on what you can and cannot say on a billboard? I assume you can't say nothing defamatory and you can't say f***, p*** or c***, is that right? Agency man Red Welby: Or a***. Mildred Hayes: I think I'll be alright then. Red Welby: You're Angela Hayes's mother. Mildred Hayes: That's right, ...

Mildred Hayes had a teenage daughter, Angela, who was raped and murdered seven months ago. Angry over the lack of progress in the investigation, she rents three abandoned billboards (hoardings) near her home, which, in sequence she  gets painted as "Raped while dying", "And still no arrests?", and "How come, chief Willoughby?" The billboards upset the town-folk, including Sheriff Bill Willoughby and Officer Jason Dixon. Mildred and her depressed son Robbie are harassed and threatened by both town-folk and the police, but she stays firm.

While Willoughby is sympathetic to Mildred's cause, he finds the billboards an unfair attack on his character and efficiency. Angered by Mildred's lack of respect for his authority, Dixon threatens and beats up Red Welby, who rented her the billboards, and arrests Mildred’s friend and co-worker, Denise, on marijuana possession charges. Mildred is also visited by her abusive ex-husband Charlie, who is having an affair with a 19 year-old zoo attendant Penelope, and who blames Mildred’s nature for their daughter's death.

In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths’ fame writer-director Martin McDonagh is too enamoured of his one central idea that he soon runs out of ways and means to keep the audience engaged. To be fair, the plot is a strong column that could have supported more than the paint on the billboards. They cause heartburn, get burnt down in a case of arson, pose a huge problem to the  working class Mildred, costing $50,000/month in rent, and, in the end....no spoilers.

What McDonagh does in the meanwhile is to bring in character after character, with a sort of story of their own. There is a character who walks into the curio shop where Mildred works, throws down a $7 item and drops huge red herrings that the rapist-murderer could have been him. So far, the characters we have seen are all whites, and it is suggested more than once that the police hate and target blacks. So here are the blacks: a hoarding painter, a good neighbour and a new Sheriff. All good as gold. Not enough, I guess, so they have a (white) midget too, who nurses a crush on Mildred, and saves her from a definite jail rap.

Taking a hint from the title of his earlier film, we’ll find seven ‘psychopaths’ (the word being loosely used) here too: Willoughby, Dixon, Dixon’s mother, Angela Hayes, Charlie, James the Midget, the elusive criminal. All seven behave in strange ways, to say the least.

Willoughby has his own way of putting an end to pain and misery. Dixon stutters that English is required for a police job or any other job there fays, unless you want to work in Mexico. His mother is a foul-mouthed TV-watching sourpuss who keeps advising him what to do and what not to do. Angela decides to go out for a late night party alone, walking through lonely woods, and hoping she will get raped. She does. Charlie sets fire to the hoardings while inebriated. Penelope has confusing quotes for all occasions, while she changes jobs at the zoo, now serving the disabled patrons. James thinks he can win over Mildred by providing her an alibi. An alibi for what? Our Queen psychopath throws four Molotov cocktails into a police station because she thinks the police burnt her billboards. The ‘suspect’ plays a cat and mouse game with Mildred, without any clear motivation.

No, the film does not work as crime v/s law. It does not work as corrupt cops v/s honest badge-holders. With the spectre of the brutal rape and murder hanging on to every frame, the only way it can work is as a black comedy, rather grey comedy! But the genuine laughs are few and far between, with Mildred’s face carved in titanium. Alright, you guffaw when Dixon is wheeled into the same hospital room where Welby, who he had brutally assaulted, is being treated. A doffing of the hat to Norman Wisdom’s A Stitch in Time (1963). It cannot go unnoticed that though the film is set in the racially sensitive south of the USA, it is more British than American in its feel and shot taking.  And undeniably, his heart beats for the underdog.

McDonagh hooks you with a carefully crafted first scene very well executed by Cinematographer by Ben Davis. Locations are loquacious, being the very areas in Western North Carolina where The Fugitive, Dirty Dancing and The Hunger Games were filmed. Then gives you an imaginative revelation of Willoughby’s health condition that is brilliant (Film Editing by Jon Gregory (A United Kingdom, Slow West, Mr. Turner). That having been said, this does not seem to be the film that McDonagh wanted to make.

One has read about the ensemble cast creating waves, waves that to me are little ripples. Frances McDormand (Oscar for Fargo, Mississippi Burning, Almost Famous, North Country) stays in character 100% of the time, and you keep guessng100% of the time whether she is really clever or clever by half. She wears overalls and scarves all the time. Caleb Landry Jones (The Social Network, X Men: First Class, Get Out) is at the receiving end of almost all that is happening, but he’s not complaining. Kerry Condon     (Avengers: Age of Ultron, Captain America: Civil War—voice roles both; The Last Station, The Walking Dead) has a mildly comic part.

Sam Rockwell  (Iron Man: Homecoming, Conviction, The Way, Way Back) as Dixon makes the most of a meaty role, most of which does not show him in a good light. Darrell Britt-Gibson (Soy Nero, Keanu, 20^th Century Women) is easy as the Billboard painter. Woody Harrelson (Seven Psychopaths, War for Planet of the Apes, Hunger Games) has the perfect physique and face for the role of Willoughby, and gets right under the skin of the character.

It required a certain kind of self-deprecating humour to play Penelope, and Samara Weaving has it in her. Kathryn Newton hams as Angela, and nobody will blame her. Abbie Cornish makes a buxom Mrs. Anne Willoughby. Almost casual in his demeanour, Clarke Peters just melts into the role of Sheriff Abercrombie. Midget he might be, but many of his films will dwarf the competition: The Station Agent, Elf, Find Me Guilty, Underdog, X-Men: Days of Future Past. As Mildred’s neighbour and soul-mate, Amanda Warren has a couple of noticeable scenes.

Rated R for language and sexual content, Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri has been partly sanitised by the Central Board of Film Certification. That they have allowed the f word so many times s a miracle in itself. 115 minutes is not too long for a murder mystery, with clues and detection, confrontation and action. Trouble is there is no such menu on the table of Chef McDonagh. Lastly, it cannot escape anybody that Mildred gets away with almost anything, and her arrival at the police station is always greeted with fear. What clout does she wield? Just Three Billboards?

Rating: ** ½ (Two-and-a-half stars for Three Billboards).

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jit3YhGx5pU

From the Internet, Little White Lies, 10 January 2018 (the text below was composed in the Impact font, but I cannot be sure whether it will appear as such).

“The first sign, which reads ‘RAPED WHILE DYING’, is striking enough, but what makes it even more so is how it is written. The violence of the acts carried out against Mildred’s daughter is reflected in the colour of the boards, but the words themselves wouldn’t have the same effect if they were written in Futura or Comic Sans. Typography is a vital component of writer/director Martin McDonagh’s film, and there’s only one font that is bold and in-your-face enough for Mildred’s cause.

Designed by Geoffrey Lee in 1965, Impact was one of the last typefaces that the Stephenson Blake foundry in Sheffield made from metal. An alphabet forged in flame, for a time when words that were shared weren’t so easily removed, seems entirely appropriate for a ferocious wordsmith like Mildred Hayes. Lee, an advertising director, set about designing a font that got “as much ink on paper as possible in a given size”, ideal for advertisers getting their money’s worth (or in its predominant 21st century usage, ideal for giving text on memes clarity). Whether this is Mildred’s doing, or the work of Ebbing Avenue’s resident ad man Red Welby (Caleb Landry Jones), the billboards share her voice.

Just as Mildred’s overalls and headscarf are a key part of her character, so her choice of typeface tells us something about her personality. Impact is the kind of font that makes every sentence feel like it ends with an exclamation mark. The ascending and descending points are squat; rather than strolling with you into the next letter, the short, sharp kick of the Ls leave a bruise. The condensed letters and thick strokes are quicker and easier to read than a wider typeface; ideal for someone wanting to get a message across to the maximum number of people in the most direct way possible.

Mildred is not a big woman, yet in every interaction with her fellow Ebbing residents she cuts an intimidating figure, and this powerful economy of scale extends to her billboards. Despite Geoffrey Lee’s desire for his font to cover pages, on these three billboards they don’t need to because the words and simple presentation make them transcend their frame. Mildred wants people to take notice, and with the help of Impact, she certainly does that