A devastating exploration of violence, revenge, and the power of road-side advertising.

Look beneath the shiny surface of any given comedy and you’ll find a darkness that belies the smiles. In this often cruel world, sometimes you’ve got no option but to stop, stare down the darkness, and giggle like an idiot.

Using levity as a defence from the desolation, comedy has always been used as something of a coping mechanism from the harsh realities of life; yet, there’s one shady sect of the genre that positively revels in the darkness. From Dr Strangelove to Four Lions, black comedy’s freedom from taboo has birthed some of the finest and funniest films in cinema history but, despite its potential for greatness, it’s certainly not a genre to be taken lightly.

While many filmmakers have come and gone in their attempt to walk black comedy’s precarious tonal tightrope, few have done it quite like Martin McDonagh. With violence, death, and unimaginable tragedy rubbing shoulders with slapstick, one-liners, and pithy put-downs; McDonagh has carved out quite the reputation for scouring the depths of the human experience to find laughter in the most uncomfortable of places. In only his third film, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri sees the director in his darkest, funniest, and most uncompromising form yet.

Seven months after the rape and murder of her teenage daughter, grieving mother Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand) is angry and aghast that no culprit has been caught. Seething at the investigation’s lack of progress, Mildred pays for three roadside billboards to be splashed with a controversial message calling out her town’s chief of police, Bill Willoughby (Woody Harrelson). Causing consternation among Ebbing’s residents, this bold act of defiance sets Mildred on a direct collision course with both Willoughby and his hot-headed deputy, Officer Dixon (Sam Rockwell); and, as their bitter war spirals out of control, moral lines blur as one mother’s fight for justice threatens to consume everyone around her.

Before we go any further, can we just stop and fully appreciate Frances McDormand for a moment? As the very antithesis of a Hollywood star, McDormand has nonetheless risen to become one of the most talented and celebrated performers in the industry; yet, despite her long and impressive filmography, McDormand has often operated in the shadows, seemingly happy to stay out of the limelight.

Well…I think we can all agree that’s no longer the case.

In a film stacked high with the likes of Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, Caleb Landry Jones, Abbie Cornish, Peter Dinklage, and Clarke Peters; many would have a hard time cutting through, but McDormand is clearly having none of it as she takes to the challenge like a petrol bomb to a police station window. Part grieving mother, part John Wayne; this is a singular performance of brutality, determination, fragility, and fury that will go down as one of the defining moments of McDormand’s career.

Arriving armed with anger, wrath, Molotov cocktails, and dentist drills; Mildred sweeps in as a force of nature, absolutely unmoved by the concerns of others, and motivated only by a smouldering desire for the truth. McDormand’s command of the role is all-encompassing, as Mildred adopts a scorched-earth approach to justice; yet, while we’re treated to the kind of no-shits-given, antiheroic performance that’d make Clint Eastwood blush, there’s far more nuance than the resultant carnage would suggest.

As the perfect embodiment of the film itself, Mildred is a character of fierce contradictions that require absolute control to avoid a full-blown meltdown and boy, does McDormand deliver. Abrasive, single-minded, and hard-as-nails; Mildred is a whirlwind of righteous indignation that threatens to tear everybody a new one, yet there’s a weakness inherent in the character’s tough exterior that appears ready to blow her apart at any moment, and it’s precisely in the fragility that McDormand thrives.

On the surface of it, Mildred’s bloody-minded fury threatens to skew Three Billboards into a world of revenge fantasy but, just as the film appears ready to set itself down this path of vigilante vengeance, we take a sudden left turn into something far more interesting. To this end, McDormand’s ability to snake between the bulldozing aggression of Mildred’s one-track quest and the brittle heart-break as the guilt and pain that power her, begin to poison her, is truly astonishing.

No stranger to comedy’s darkest corners, McDormand’s confident handling Mildred’s scathing wit in the face of tragedy is truly incredible, but not the least bit surprising. The actress has made a fine career out of finding levity in even her bleakest films; the peak of which came with her Oscar-winning turn as Marge Gunderson, whose spark and charm were enough to illuminate even Fargo’s bleakness moments. Though their methods couldn’t be further apart, Marge and Mildred are bonded through a mutual desire to face down the pain and death around them, and to hit back with a with a smile, even as it threatens to consume them whole.

Though Frances McDormand offers the most obvious link, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’s debt to the Coen brothers runs even deeper than that. The tonal and thematic similarities to much of Coen’s early filmography are laid out for all to see; as death, darkness, and farce rub shoulders with one another in awkward and brilliant ways.

Far from an imitation, however, Three Billboards takes the core concepts of almost any Coen brothers film and spins it with Martin McDonagh’s unique and darkly slapstick take on violence, vengeance, death, and the stark realities of small town life. Like Fargo, Raising Arizona, and even The Big Lebowski; as the violence and tit-for-tat vengeance of Three Billboards begins to spiral out of control, so too does its humour, as lines begin to blur and we no longer know when to laugh, cry, or be repulsed.

It’s far from a comfortable viewing experience, yet it’s in this unnerving qualities of Three Billboards that allows McDonagh to cut deep to the heart of what makes black comedy such a potent form of storytelling. Through the lens of a slapstick farce, the film lays bare an unfiltered look at small town America; confronting us with the commonplace nature of systematic violence, racism, and abuse that continues to haunt the country. That McDonagh opts to confront these issues with a wry sense of humour, makes things all that more devastating.

McDonagh clearly thrives on unpredictability and, much like In Bruges, the director’s penchant for surprise is again in evidence as the director lobs so many curveballs our way it’s hard to know who to trust or where to turn. Even the film’s genre itself performs hand brake turn after hand break turn as it jerks from poignant drama to screwball comedy to political satire to revenge thriller to balls-out western with dizzying abandon.

Without any prior knowledge of McDonagh’s work, one might expect something far more worthy from the subject matter but, just as we prepare ourselves for Mildred’s good fight for truth and justice, the rug is yanked out from underneath us as we head off on a completely different path of brutality, blood-shed, and burned-out billboards.

As our expectations and preconceptions are undermined at every turn, Three Billboards becomes one hell of a visceral, all-encompassing experience; yet the film’s insistence on traversing the muddy waters of morality occasionally leads it into somewhat troubling areas, specifically with Ebbing’s resident bent cop, Officer Dixon.

Rockwell is frankly untouchable in his ability to play absolutely reprehensible scumbags, with Dixon ranking among one the finest merchants of scumbaggery in the actor’s filmography; however, the problem isn’t with the performance itself, but in the film’s approach to the character’s actions (both off-screen and on) and his road to something approaching redemption.

As Martin McDonagh’s shades of grey approach gets applied to his characters; morals and political correctness get twisted and twisted again to the point that absolutely no one walks away from the film way they entered it. While the development of characters like Mildred and Willoughby are fascinating in the flat-out refusal to allow your emotions settle on them for too long, they both pale in comparison to the character chicanery of Dixon.

While Three Billboards pulls back from an all-out redemption arc for Dixon, it certainly allows for a surprising level of sympathy in a character that starts the film as an absolutely deplorable racist and bigot. While the character’s appalling actions and attitude are never excused, neither are they fully interrogated and, as the film reaches its conclusion, Dixon has been all-but forgiven for his past misdemeanours; leaving a slight sour aftertaste to an otherwise incredible film.

As a deeply emotional, finely-tuned piece of black comedy cinema, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is an unparalleled success and undoubtedly one of the films of the year; however, as a slice of socio-political commentary, it falls short of these lofty standards. Like his other films to date, there are vague attempts by McDonagh to raise pertinent political questions but they are somewhat undermined by a reluctance to follow through on them.

How you receive Three Billboards will ultimately come down to how you approach it. Martin McDonagh has made a career from giving political correctness the middle finger and, despite the awkwardness of Dixon’s redemption, this is the frame of mind you’ll want to view Three Billboards in. With taboos broken left, right, and centre; it’s clear that McDonagh has taken an equal opportunities approach to his satire and the result is a film as bloody-minded and as blindly unwilling to compromise as its protagonist.

Hinging on a force of nature performance from its lead, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is a superbly crafted and razor-sharp tale of love, death, violence, vengeance, and the power of road-side advertising. Ably supported by an incredible cast, Frances McDormand is in her element as Mildred; a character born of the Coen brothers, reinforced by the no-shits-given will of John Wayne, and shot through the abrasive lens of Martin McDonagh. Equal parts heart-breaking and rib-tickling, Three Billboards refuses to fit into any boxes you may have ready for it and, despite the oddly pitched redemption of its most deplorable character; the film’s devastating combination of pitch-black comedy and overwhelming personal tragedy make it a blistering and bleakly honest look at human nature in all its brutal glory.