Tom Reagan (Byrne), indispensable man to prohibition crime boss Leo (Finney), is caught up in a no-win love affair, mounting gambling debts, and to add some juice, Irish and Italian mobs are competing for his unique talents. With everything to lose Reagan plays to keep his hat.
A suspenseful movie playing tribute to film noir/crime noir flicks of the 40s and 50s with inspiration from Dashiell Hammett’s ‘The Glass Key’ and ‘Red Harvest’. The plot is complicated that with a patty wagon full of characters it takes considerable effort, initially, to keep ‘em all straight.
This is Coens’ 3rd movie coming after ‘Blood Simple’ in 1984 and ‘Raising Arizona’ in 1987.
Genre: Crime—Drama—Film Noir–Thriller
Directed by: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Screenplay by: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Music by: Carter Burwell
Cast: Gabriel Byrne, Albert Finney, John Turturro
Film Locations: New Orleans
Els: 8.5/10
IMDb: 7.7/10
Rotten Tomatoes Critics: 93/100
Rotten Tomatoes Audience: 90/100
Metacritic Metascore: 66/100
Metacritic User Score: 8.4/10
Theaters: 21 September 1990
Runtime: 115 minutes
Budget: $10-14 Million
Worldwide Box Office: $5 Million
Source: IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, Wikipedia. Graphic: Movie Poster by 20th Century Fox.
Awards: Best Actress–Best Supporting Actor, Academy Awards; Best Actress–Best Picture–Best Screenplay–Best Supporting Actor, Golden Globe Awards; and many others.
How I missed this movie for 7 years is mystery but I’m glad I found it. The movie won multiple major Academy and Golden Globe Awards and it didn’t even register within my sphere of consciousness. Of course, if I paid any attention, which I don’t, to Hollywood award shows I may have caught it. But any who, I saw a mention about the movie online while browsing and decided to give it view. I’m probably the only person on the planet that hasn’t watched this movie but on the off chance you haven’t, you should.
After Coen Brother’s 1996 black comedy crime film: ‘Fargo‘, ‘Three Billboards‘ brings another black comedy crime film without the Coens but thankfully with Joel Coen’s spouse, the fantastically wonderful actress, Frances McDormand to the screen. McDormand takes the lead role in ‘Three Billboards‘, as she did in ‘Fargo‘, and turns in a engrousing performance as a grieving and scheming mother earning her the Academy and Golden Globes Best Actress awards in the process.
‘Three Billboards‘ was written and directed by Martin McDonagh in which he garnered the 2017 Golden Globe Best Screenplay for the movie. He followed up this film with the 2022 movie ‘The Banshees of Inisherin‘ which won the 2022 Golden Globe for Best Movie. In both movies McDonagh brings his trademark dark humor cloaked in a drama to the big screen. Tragedy is a better genre fit for McDonagh’s work but that term seems to belong to a time long passed.
FootnoteA
Frances McDormand, as Mildred, is a mother looking for closure over her daughter’s rape and murder in the small town of Ebbing, Missouri. After many months of waiting for the local authorities to solve the crimes she grows despondent and desperate over the lack of progress in apprehending, or at a minimum, identifying a suspect and begins to take matters into her own hands.
This movie hits on all cylinders, the screenplay, direction, cinematography which is beautiful, and acting all come together to produce a mostly coherent story with multiple sub-plots that are a feast for your senses and emotions. The only ding I have is that towards the end of the movie McDonagh introduces a twist in the plot that makes very little sense unless they were planning for a sequel, or it is a deus ex machina solution to an intractable plot problem. It is a minor irritation but in its defense, without the twist the final scene would have been very different and likely not as fullfilling.
On an extraneous side note, as with ‘Fargo‘ which was filmed mainly in multiple locations in Minnesota, ‘Three Billboards’ was filmed in multiple locations in North Carolina. Movies are for believers.
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