Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri gets a… | Little White Lies

Trailers

Three Bill­boards Out­side Ebbing, Mis­souri gets a sweary trailer

23 Mar 2017

Words by Adam Woodward

Do not f*ck with Frances McDor­mand is the take­away from this first look at Michael McDonagh’s latest.

Frances McDor­mand is one of those actors who rarely gets the cred­it they deserve, per­haps because she is so often cast in sup­port­ing roles (although she invari­ably steals the show from the real’ stars). So it feels like a rare treat to see her giv­en what looks to be a meaty lead­ing role in this new one from writer/​director Mar­tin McDonagh.

In the rather clunki­ly titled Three Bridges Out­side Ebbing, Mis­souri she plays a griev­ing moth­er who hand-paints three signs lead­ing into her home town, each with a provoca­tive mes­sage aimed square­ly at Woody Harrelson’s police chief, who she blames for fail­ing to catch her daughter’s killer sev­er­al months after the fact.

Her prick­ly, uncom­pro­mis­ing man­ner quick­ly exac­er­bates mat­ters, with the local law enforce­ment seem­ing­ly pow­er­less to cur­tail her feath­er-ruf­fling efforts. It’s a role that seems tai­lor made for McDor­mand, who in this trail­er alone drops a stag­ger­ing num­ber of exple­tives and with­er­ing insults, and to hilar­i­ous effect each time.

With In Bruges and his last fea­ture, 2012’s Sev­en Psy­chopaths, McDon­agh built a rep­u­ta­tion as one of the sharpest writ­ers of dia­logue around. His lat­est boasts an impres­sive cast list – includ­ing Sam Rock­well, Peter Din­klage, John Hawkes and Lucas Hedges – which sug­gests to us that the script must be a crack­er. We’ll know for sure when it hits cin­e­mas lat­er this year.

Two illustrated book covers depicting a smiling Black man wearing a hat and tie, with a city skyline in the background

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