Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

The starting point of Martin McDonagh’s 2017 film was not invented. Passing through Vidor, Texas around 1998 he saw roadside billboards accusing the police of failing to solve the killing of Kathy Page; her father, James Fulton, had put them up. McDonagh carried the image about a decade before turning it into fiction. The striking structural choice is that the second half of these 115 minutes is directed by a dead man. Chief Willoughby’s letters arrive at the midpoint and assign everyone their next move, so the back half feels steered rather than open. Dixon, who throws a man out of a window in the first act, is later handed the lead that breaks the investigation open. The part had been written for Sam Rockwell, as Mildred had been for Frances McDormand. McDormand thought herself too old and proposed that Mildred be the grandmother; McDonagh refused, and her husband Joel Coen talked her into it. Shooting started on 2 May 2016 in Sylva, North Carolina and ran 33 days, with the billboards erected in a pasture near Black Mountain. The film premiered in Venice on 4 September 2017. Go in accepting a close where no case is solved and the decision hangs in a car. Avoid it if Dixon’s turn reads as unearned.