I hated Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
When I first saw it, I was like this.
After a few hours, I was like this.
Now, that I’ve had time to think about it, like really think about it, and hear from people who also take issue, I’m like this.
I call this the Three Stages of Hate for Three Billboards.
Here are the Three (or more) reasons I hate this movie written and directed by Martin McDonagh. Please note, this review contains spoilers.
#1 Rape as a plot device
How many more times do we have to write this? Stop using the rape and murder of a woman as a plot device. It’s so effing lazy. We wouldn’t have the Three Billboards without the rape/murder of Angela. Her unsolved rape/murder means character development for Angela’s mother, the police force, and the town of Ebbing, Missouri.
It’s also not lost on me that that McDonagh tried to make the rape as horrific as he could, with Angela being raped while being immolated. Why have regular rape when you can a rape that is all extra?
This is a story of injustice and a mother’s revenge, but that theme can be found without victimizing and killing women (and daughters) Could we take a rape break for one year? That’s only 365 days of rape-free character development. That doesn’t seem like too much to ask.
#2 Domestic violence is hilarious
The dead girl’s mom is Mildred (Frances McDormand). Midlred is divorced from her physically abusive husband, Charlie (John Hawkes), who is now living with nineteen-year-old Penelope.
Penelope is young and pretty. She’s willowy, like a baby deer. And when she speaks, she’s a dipshit. The audience is supposed to laugh at her and the dingbat things she says, while we know good and well that Charlie is likely abusing her, too. While this girl is getting her face slapped off screen, the audience is slapping its knees at the the comic relief she is meant to offer.
This move wants us to feel anger about the lack of justice for a dead woman while laughing at the one victim who is still alive.
#3 So Many Plot Holes
This movie is full of plot choices that make no sense. No way Martin’s script would have made it through the Story Writing for Beginners Workshop at his local library.
- Police Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) receives the ire of Mildred and is the person she name-checks on her billboards. He is portrayed as a smart, competent person, and yet he employs the halfwit, racist cop Dixon played by Sam Rockwell. No real reason is given as to why Chief Willoughby puts up with Dixon and his drunken, Civil-Rights-breaking behavior. It makes no sense, other than McDonagh needed a redemption story, and this was the easiest way to create it, good storytelling be damned.
- Mildred suspects some dude from Idaho is her daughter’s killer after he comes into her workplace and threatens her. Dixon overhears the same dude bragging about killing a girl, setting her on fire, so Dixon suspects him, too. Unfortunately, the guy from out of town could not have killed Angela, because he was overseas fighting in the Army at the time of the murder. Why would this guy seek out Mildred and threaten her if he has nothing to do with anything? McDonagh must have made the “shrugging emoji” symbol on his copy of the script.
- Using Molotov cocktails, Mildred blows up the police station, with Dixon trapped inside. She has obvious motive, and the cops find her sitting outside the burning police station. But Peter Dinklage offers her a shaky alibi which the police readily accept with a “Coolcoolcoolcool.” Plus this:
And a police station apparently without a back door. That closes down completely at night like a bank.
— SmokeNMirrors71 (@SmokeNMirrors71) January 24, 2018
#3.1 Other Reason I Hate This Movie
The only compelling person in the movie, Chief Willoughby, dies halfway in.
Are we also supposed to be laughing at Peter Dinklage because he’s a little person? I think we are.
Why does this shit town have a gift shop?
Part of Mildred’s character development is her wearing a gas station jumpsuit and not using make-up. She is the reverse manic pixie dream girl.
The racist cop stays racist (and nearly kills the kid who sells advertising), but he might find salvation by killing another white dude. We are supposed to applaud this.
