Three character arcs inside Ebbing, Missouri

[THREE MAIN CHARACTERS]

[AND STILL NO CLEAR GOOD GUY?]

[HOW COME, MARTIN MCDONAGH]

(SPOILERS BELOW)

Martin McDonagh's latest film takes us to Ebbing, Missouri, a town stuck in its ways and where, unlike an ebbing river, nothing much changes direction. It's pretty clear the law doesn't care, and the only way to make a difference is to take matters in to your own hands. So we join Mildred Hayes, a woman determined to chat back, kick crotches and crucify motherfuckers to get some answers for her daughter's death. This is clearly our protagonist, right?

What McDonagh, (also the writer of Three Billboards) manages to do is create a trio of perfectly flawed characters, and us viewers can never quite decide who we're rooting for. With Frances Mcdormand's Golden Globe winning performance, we see Mildred go from an unimpressed interrogée to a terrified friend in the blink of an eye (or the spatter of a cough) showing that behind her tough jumpsuit wearing hide, she is just a caring mother determined to get what she wants. But in the end, her actions cause more harm than good, and with a mystery villain destroying her new 'baby', fighting fire with fire gets her nowhere but a date with a cheese-loving dwarf and nearly destroying her daughters own police file. This brutal scene stands out, with Sam Rockwell's officer Dixon having an epiphany that what he needs to be the cop he always wanted, is calmness, despite four precisely aimed molotov cocktails erupting around him.

From trailers for the film, Woody Harrelson's chief Willoughby, the target of the infamous flaming red billboards, seems to be the lazy bad cop at the root of the town's problem. But through the chiefs shockingly-cut-short role in the film, he pretty much ends up the main good cop, in his own piss-taking way. His letters, (good job if you held back the tears at this stage) are in a way his own 3 billboards, passing on his last messages to the townspeople in a better way than Hayes ever manages to do. "Cause you need english really if you wanna be a cop"- Dixon's seemingly throwaway line actually rings sweet with Willoughby's poetically written letters to show he was the best cop he could be.

And speaking of our final character Dixon, with Rockwell also snagging a Golden Globe, we are led from the mummy's boy comic reading man-child to a man who we believe has finally caught the killer. With the single take of Dixon invading the ad agency and 'evicting' its employee, it's hard to feel like any kind of redemption is possible. But by the time the chiefs hope of 'overhearing someone drunk in a bar' comes true, Dixon shows his true colours, risking his life twice to protect hope for Angela Hayes' case. With the final gut-punch that McDonagh throws our way, Dixon doesn't get his man, but still helps Mildred get the closure she thinks she wants.

Whether our two remaining antiheroes follow through is left beautifully ambiguous, but what we can be sure of is that McDonagh has delivered a masterpiece, hilarious when it tries to be and enthralling when it needs to be. Three Billboards can expect a very exciting awards run this year, in large part thanks to the realistic yet wildly captivating development of

Ebbing's bizarrely likeable townspeople.