Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Martin McDonagh, 2017)

Sam Rockwell, Frances McDormand, and Zeljko Ivanek in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Mildred Hayes: Frances McDormand
Bill Willoughby: Woody Harrelson
Jason Dixon: Sam Rockwell
Anne Willoughby: Abbie Cornish
Robbie Hayes: Lucas Hedges
Desk Sergeant: Zeljko Ivanek
Red Welby: Caleb Landry Jones
Chief Abercrombie: Clarke Peters
Charlie Hayes: John Hawkes
James: Peter Dinklage
Momma Dixon: Sandy Martin

Director: Martin McDonagh
Screenplay: Martin McDonagh
Cinematography: Ben Davis
Production design: Inbal Weinberg
Film editing: Jon Gregory
Music: Carter Burwell

Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell got the Oscars they deserved: Mildred Hayes's sour persistence and Jason Dixon's stupidity make them just short of caricatures; they needed the nuances provided by McDormand and Rockwell to come to any semblance of life. But the performer who gives Martin McDonagh's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri the grounding it needs is Woody Harrelson, one of those actors, like John Goodman or the late Bill Paxton, whose presence in the cast could make any movie just a little bit better. Chief Willoughby, the butt of Mildred's billboards, is not the dumb small-town police chief that we (and of course Mildred) first believe him to be. He's a more complex figure, who even achieves a measure of tragic grandeur with his suicide, carefully leaving a note on the hood he puts over his face to tell his wife not to remove it but to leave that to the police, and then leaving behind notes for his nemesis, Mildred, and for Dixon ("I'm dead now, sorry about that") that set the remainder of the film in motion. He gives McDonagh's acerbic screenplay a bit of warmth, though maybe not enough: I found Three Billboards a less satisfying film than the wonderful In Bruges (2008). But like that film, it has a fascinating texture provided by a supporting cast full of skillful players: Lucas Hedges as Mildred's somewhat exasperated son; Zeljko Ivanek as the desk sergeant trying to bring order out of the office chaos ("You do not allow a member of the public to call you a fuckhead in the station house"); Caleb Landry Jones as the advertising manager who gets the brunt of the town's protests and is tossed out of a window by Dixon; Clarke Peters as the level-headed new chief who manages to restore order after Willoughby's death; John Hawkes as Mildred's hair-trigger ex-husband encumbered with an air-headed girlfriend; Peter Dinklage as Mildred's suitor bearing up under constant reminders that he's a "midget"; and Sandy Martin as Dixon's demanding racist mother. There are also scenes that come out of nowhere, as when Mildred, tending the flowers at her billboards, carries on a tender, one-sided conversation with a deer that has wandered into the field and is watching her. In the runup to the Oscars, when it was a contender for best picture, Three Billboards encountered some criticism for not taking more seriously Dixon's treatment of black people, especially since the real town of Ferguson is in the same state as the fictional Ebbing. There's some justice to the charge that McDonagh is being insensitive, but satire is always insensitive. It's not a great film, I think, but maybe that judgment is premature. As Mildred says, "I guess we can decide along the way."

In Bruges (Martin McDonagh, 2008)

Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell in In Bruges

Ray: Colin Farrell
Ken: Brendan Gleeson
Harry: Ralph Fiennes
Chloe: Clémence Poésy
Jimmy: Jordan Prentice
Yuri: Eric Godon
Canadian Man: Zeljko Ivanek
Eirik: Jérémie Renier
Marie: Thekla Reuten

Director: Martin McDonagh
Screenplay: Martin McDonagh
Cinematography: Eigil Bryld
Music: Carter Burwell

Martin McDonagh's In Bruges is a bloody little gem about two hitmen, Ray and Ken, who have been sent by their boss, Harry, to the picturesque Belgian city of Bruges to await further instructions. Brooding, depressed Ray thinks Bruges is a "shithole," whereas Ken is rather taken with the medieval architecture, the cobblestone streets, and the canals. Ray's deep funk stems from guilt: While carrying out a hit Harry ordered -- we never find out why -- on a priest (Ciarán Hinds in an unbilled cameo), Ray accidentally killed a small boy who was standing behind the priest, waiting his turn in the confessional. Ken drags Ray around the city, trying to raise his spirits with sightseeing, but the only thing that works is Ray's discovery of a crew making a film on location and particularly of the pretty Chloe, a production assistant who is actually a drug dealer. Ray is also enchanted that one of the actors is what he calls "a midget" named Jimmy, which allows him to investigate his theory that little people are particularly inclined to be suicidal. Wait, I'm getting lost in the filigree that In Bruges is full of. To return to the main plot, it turns out that the real reason Harry has sent Ray and Ken to Bruges is so Ray can have a good time before Ken kills him. But to understand that, you have to go back into the filigree again: Harry has his own personal gangster code, one article of which is that you must never kill a child, so Ray has to pay the price, but since one of Harry's few happy memories is of the time he spent at the age of 7 in Bruges, he naturally assumes that the trip will be so delightful for Ray that he can die happy. Writer-director McDonagh's imaginative intricacies of characterization and motive might have resulted in only a somewhat twee black comedy if it weren't for the brilliance of his performers, especially Farrell in a part that turned him from a second-string leading man to a specialist in eccentric characters in oddball independent films like Yorgos Lanthimos's The Lobster (2015). In Bruges is crowded with unexpectedly colorful secondary characters, including Zeljko Ivanek as a Canadian whom Ray insults in a restaurant by mistaking him for an American; Jérémie Renier as Chloe's former boyfriend, who attacks Ray but winds up getting shot in the face with his own gun, loaded with blanks; and Thekla Reuten as Marie, the proprietor of the boutique hotel where Ray and Ken are staying, who meticulously takes down a message to them from Harry, who emphasizes every word in the message by modifying it with "fucking." It's true that the film ends in a bloodbath, but somehow the tone McDonagh has established, with the help of a fine score by Carter Burwell, allows it to transcend its violent excesses.