I don’t know much about Martin McDonagh (the writer/director of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), but I bet that he is a really, really big fan of Fargo. In terms of plot, this film doesn’t specifically have many similarities to Fargo, but it does try to emulate the tone and themes of that classic in an almost amusingly precise way. While Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is certainly not a bad film, it does answer the question of what Fargo would be like in the hands of less talented filmmakers.
Frances McDormand (star of Fargo and wife of Joel Coen, the co-writer/director of Fargo) stars as Mildred Hayes, a woman whose teenaged daughter was raped and burned to death seven months prior to the start of the film. Angered by the police department’s inability to find her daughter’s killer, she rents three billboards and puts up messages calling out the local police chief (played by Woody Harrelson) for not solving the case. Things escalate from there, but I’ll leave it be because the film is pretty unpredictable.
This film is getting a lot of critical praise and I think its warranted in some respects. The performances are excellent and both McDormand and Harrelson (one of my favorite actors) deserve awards consideration for their performances. Sam Rockwell is also great as a drunken cop that probably has the strongest character arc in the film. The script is also quite good with an original premise and, as mentioned, some unexpected turns. The film doesn’t have a particularly satisfying resolution, but I honestly didn’t know where this thing was headed for the duration of the running time.
The problem is that, while Martin McDonagh’s script is quite good, he should have handed it to a more seasoned director. The blend of dark humor and brutal violence is very difficult to pull off effectively, as one element can easily seem inappropriate or overwhelm the other. One of the reasons why people like Quentin Tarantino and the Coen brothers (creators of Fargo) are so revered is because they are able to pull of that juxtaposition. The subject matter of this film is fucking bleak and mixing it with humor is dicey, especially so in the hands of such an inexperienced filmmaker. On one hand, you have rape and cancer patients committing suicide. On the other hand, you have weird goofy subplots about a midget (or dwarf or whatever the acceptable term is this month) and a character dating an idiotic 19-year-old. The tone just doesn’t work consistently and, as a result, the humor often feels out of place. The film is largely exploring similar ground as Fargo in a broad sense (regular people in a small town get wrapped up in terrible and violent situations), but the filmmakers would have been wise to make this as a straight drama rather than try to copy that film’s dark humor. It also doesn’t help to cast Frances McDormand in a film so obviously inspired by Fargo, as I simply couldn’t stop comparing the two films. Come to think of it, McDormand’s character in Fargo was pregnant and that film came out around 20 years ago, which would be nearly right for her daughter in this film. So, there you go: Marge from Fargo quit the force after the events of that film, changed her name to Mildred Hayes and moved to Ebbing, Missouri. It’s not good when a film is so clearly inspired by another film that I’ve easily reconceived it as a fanfiction sequel.
The other problem is that none of the characters are particularly likeable. Yeah, Mildred has gone through something terrible that I won’t pretend to be able to understand. But her anger at the police is misplaced because they didn’t actually do anything wrong. It’s not that they don’t want to solve the case or that they haven’t tried, its just that they can’t find any evidence. In fact, I thought that the police chief (the focal point of Mildred’s anger) is the most sympathetic character in the film. Sam Rockwell’s character has moments of redemption in the final act, but he is also an abusive, drunken asshole. All of the minor characters can be described as varying levels of shitty. Overall, this is a pretty miserable group of people to spend a couple hours with.
If you like the darker work of the Coen brothers (particularly Fargo and No Country for Old Men), then you might like this if you temper your expectations. I wish that this was actually a Coen brothers movie instead of an imitation, but its not a bad imitation. Most other people will likely just be depressed by this. But if you like dark humor centered around rape, cancer, alcoholism and suicide, then, um, Merry Christmas?
Image By: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c7/Three_Billboards_Outside_Ebbing%2C_Missouri_poster.png
