Review of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) by Leong C — 14 Apr 2018

I'm not quite sure how to rate or assess this film. It has a rather bizarre take on human behavior, trying ultimately to convince us that love and forgiveness are the most important human emotions, but along the way showing us mostly brutal and stupid human beings engaged in the most outrageous behavior with the most inexplicable lack of consequences much of the time.

There are numerous issues of logical inconsistency or contrived situations that play out in ways that make little sense, not just that they are unexpected but that they are loony and abhorrent. Frances McDormand is an excellent actress, but here she plays a character who is unconvincing as a bereaved mother who, in her grief over the loss of her daughter, is not just righteously angry but downright mean and undeserving of our sympathy the more we learn about the investigation into that murder.

Woody Harrelson plays a sheriff who is the target of McDormand's character as she faults him for failing to find her daughter's killer, but the film wants us to see the sheriff as a very decent guy who is the loving core of the film.

Yet he can't even discipline his racist, lazy officer who runs amok much of the time. Sam Rockwell was given awards for his portrayal of that rogue cop, played in a way that is more freakish and hateful than sympathetic.

I don't consider this a bravura performance at all; it's more of an oddball play for dark humor that just doesn't work well. The final scenes are more unbelievable than redeeming in a film that can't manage to make enough sense.