Oddly enough, the true brilliance of this film can be located not in the positive reviews, but in those forwarding certain negative perspectives. Considering that the film generated mostly positive reviews and that the outlying negative critiques were not directed toward any cinematic aspects (acting, directing, cinematography, etc.) it stands to reason that the “bad” reviews were centered upon storyline flaws. The most controversial allegation of a failure of logic in the construction of the narrative is centered upon the character of Jason Dixon (despite Sam Rockwell winning an Oscar for his performance). Dixon spends much of the film as a completely loathsome character energized by hate which is particularly fueled by racism. As events roll out that incorporate Dixon into the main plot, he seems to undergo a remarkably rapid redemption which critics have labeled “offensive” and prosecuted as detrimental to the character development of Mildred. And therein lies the key to how these negative considerations reveal what is actually an underlying brilliance of almost inconceivably sinister subtlety.
Of the three billboards mentioned on the title, the one which the film most explicitly aims for the audience to read as the most significant is number three: “How come, Chief Willoughby.” The opening section of the film uses this billboard—the only one of the three that gets personal with an accusation by name—to apparently set up a plot where the dramatic tension is situated as a face-off between Willoughby and Mildred. That sense of plot development reaches its climax when Mildred tells the Chief that everybody in town knows about his cancer and Willoughby’s response is utter disbelief that she would attempt to humiliate and publicly accused him with the billboards knowing the whole time he was dying. Her response puts their relationship into perspective: “Well, they wouldn't be as effective after you croak, right?” At that point it would seem that only some kind of natural disaster in the form of the wrath of God could spin this plot away from its set-up of Mildred as the heroine and the Chief as her foil and possibly a villain and even, at its most dramatic extreme, the rapist of her daughter.
And then Chief Willoughby commits suicide which for just a moment seems to make the possibility that he is a rapist and murderer all the more likely. Except that his suicide includes letters sent behind to a number of people, including Mildred and one realizes that unless the narrative is directed toward making Willoughby one of the most reprehensible villains ever, he actually quite sincerely did all he could to find the killer and that the failure to make any arrest was not an act of corruption and not an act of incompetence, but simply another of the millions of cases each year that go unsolved by police forces around the country.
By this point in the film, the makers have succeeded in getting the audience emotionally invested in Mildred’s outrage. Because the Chief hired a deputy who is clearly beyond boundaries of decency fit for service, the film has succeeded in creating enough doubt to wonder about the level of corruption within the force. And the audience has been sucked into settling in for a movie that isn’t Mildred versus the unknown murderer of her daughter, but Mildred versus Willoughby. And then, in the snap of a finger and the blink of an eye, it pulls the rug completely out from under already established assumptions.
Another way of saying it is this: the film has succeeded in making the audience complicit in everything that will happen from this point forward. And that is why the criticism of Dixon’s redemption is, in the long run, a dead-end road to travel down. Instant redemption is possible; the audience handed it over to Willoughby. With his suicide letters, all that doubt and wonder that was built up in the first part of the movie vanishes with smoke. Thanks to Woody Harrelson’s almost impossibly perfect performance of this deeply troubled man, it can honestly be said that one second the audience has to question his character even if in despite of themselves and in the next second it is impossible to not believe that Willoughby is a fundamentally good man. If Willoughby’s redemption in the blink of an eye is acceptable, why isn’t Dixon’s?
Even more to the point: why hasn’t the audience lost most if not all its emotional investment and empathy toward Mildred? Her personality is a rough and grating at the end as it is at the beginning. She, fundamentally as a person, doesn’t change. But by any standard accounting of events, the audience should have undergone an enormous change in how they view her. Empathy is created by the loss of her daughter, either the corruption or incompetence of the police force and the reaction of some members of the community to her billboards. Though not a sympathy person, sympathy is established for her immediately as a character.
Let’s list what happens over the course of the movie: she quite seriously suggests violating the civil rights of half the population of American by setting up a database in which every male baby must have their DNA submitted, she drills a hole in the thumb of a dentist and then flagrantly denies even being at the dentist despite suffering the effects of Novocain quite plainly, she blows up the police station and—unwittingly, it must be admitted—causes Dixon to suffer terrible burns all over his body, she then allows a friend to lie to the police about the bombing in order to establish her alibi, she humiliates a man sincerely interested in her romantically, she embarrasses her son and by the end it appears she may well be on her way to murder a man who may or may not be guilty a rape having nothing to do with daughter.
Oh, and one other thing: the last words she ever spoke to her daughter were “Yeah, I hope you get raped, too.” Which should, upon learning this, immediately alert the audience to a very important question: are those three billboards standing outside Ebbing, Missouri because Mildred is outraged that nobody has yet been arrested or are they there to salve a mother's unbearable guilt?
We don’t really get to see much of what has earned Dixon his reputation, but it is clear enough he’s racist with a zeal for exercising excessive force. And yet, Dixon actually seems to be only the second worst person in town. Or, put another way: Mildred is fundamentally not a very good person. But having been set up from the start to see her as the sympathetic victim, most audience members don’t turn on her. And by not doing so, the filmmakers have succeeded in making that part of the audience which sticks by her side the whole way complicit in her criminal activity and psychologically damaging behavior. The real question for critics becomes less about how to accept Dixon’s seeming facile redemption than how to justify their own continued identification with Mildred.
All of which leads to the absolute sublime final line of the film which is usually categorized as ambiguous. In fact, there is nothing ambiguous about it at all:
Mildred: Dixon?
Dixon: Yeah?
Mildred: Are you sure about this?
Dixon: 'Bout killing this guy? Not really. You?
Mildred: Not really. I guess we can decide along the way.
Oh, sure, it may be ambiguous in terms of the fictional plot in the sense that it is not resolved whether the two most reprehensible people in town are going through with their plan to engage in yet another perversion of justice by taking the law into their hands. But that’s not what the final line is about. The final line is directed toward the audience who have just spent the last 115 minutes being asked to do the same thing. Decide whether or not they want to lend their support to those who act outside the boundaries of law or whether prefer to live in a society where the worst impulses of human behavior are contained and restricted by laws even at the occasional expense of justice.
