The audience picked Three Billboards over crowd-pleasing movies like The Shape of Water, Darkest Hour, and Molly’s Game. (I saw it in Toronto, and though I didn’t love the film as much as some of my colleagues, I appreciated what it was going for.) But it wasn’t just many critics who loved the movie: The ticket-buying audience at the public screenings in Toronto also voted to award the film the People’s Choice Award, historically a solid indicator of future awards-season success. The film raked in accolades from critics at its festival premiere in Venice and more in Toronto the next week.
WHERE WAS THREE BILLBOARDS FILMED MOVIE
And it was clear from the trailer that Three Billboards was a movie about a woman fed up with the world’s injustice in general and her own town’s specifically McDonagh had been working on the screenplay for years, but its arrival seemed perfectly timed for the end of 2017. It boasts a bevy of strong performances led by Frances McDormand, Sam Rockwell, and Woody Harrelson, and a barnburning screenplay by McDonagh - all of whom are among the film’s seven Oscar nominations, which also include Best Picture. In fact, the very not-solving of the murder is perhaps the key to its ending.Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri seemed poised from the start to be an awards-season steamroller. There are many things important to its plot and what it is as a film, and the identity of the murderer is not one of them. It’s not a murder mystery, or a whodunit. Beyond that, that’s just not the point of Three Billboards. If the film intended for the audience to draw that conclusion, the film would put clues in to that effect, and it does not. For one thing, the film doesn’t introduce one iota of evidence that any of these characters is guilty of the murder. People are going to make assumptions that certain characters in the film - Lucas Hedges’ depressed brother? Peter Dinklage’s flirtatious barfly? The drinking buddy of Dixon’s suspect? - was in fact the murderer.īut to try and "solve" Three Billboards is to completely misunderstand what this movie is, or what it’s ultimately about. But it turns out he was wrong, and the film ends without any resolution as to who killed Angela Hayes.Īs more and more people see Three Billboards there are likely to be fan theories about the film, its ending, and the lingering question of who actually killed Mildred’s daughter. Near the film’s end, Dixon, despite having been fired from the police department, appears to redeem himself by solving the murder while getting himself bloodied in the process. After seven months pass with no progress on the police investigation, Mildred rents the titular three billboards outside town and uses them to very publicly ask why Sheriff Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) hasn’t managed to make any arrests in the murder of her daughter.īecause Willoughby is a popular local figure (and a man who is known to be dying of cancer) the billboards turn much of the town against Mildred - most notably the drunk, racist, violent police officer Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell.) We later learn that, dysfunction in the police department notwithstanding, Willoughby most likely did all he possibly could to try to solve the crime, and he emerges as something of a poignant and tragic figure. In Three Billboards, set in a small town in rural Missouri, Mildred Hayes (McDormand) is the mother of a daughter, Angela, who has been raped and murdered. It has plentiful empathy for its characters, and sympathy among them is likely to shift, in the audience's eyes, throughout the film. For a film about such heavy subjects, it’s surprisingly, and even poignantly funny, while handling all of its tonal shifts impeccably.
The film deals with many sensitive topics - crime, sexual assault, cancer, suicide, racism, police brutality - without really getting preachy or even necessarily political about them. Related: Three Billboards Trailer #2: Frances McDormand Wants Justice The movie’s strong performances go uncommonly deep, with McDormand, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson, Lucas Hedges, and John Hawkes all delivering some of their best-ever on-screen turns. Three Billboards - currently at 95% fresh on the Tomatometer - has garnered widespread praise for several reasons. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, from writer/director Martin McDonagh ( In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths) drew widespread praise at the Venice, Toronto and Philadelphia Film Festivals this fall, ahead of its limited release on November 10th, and wider release on November 17th. One of this year’s biggest awards contenders is a small, quiet film about a mother (Frances McDormand) seeking justice following the rape and murder of her daughter.
Warning: SPOILERS ahead for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri