What Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri gets Wrong about Police Corruption

If Hannah Arendt can coin the ‘banality of evil’ then someone must have claimed the buffoonery of evil, even if only to refer to characters sprung from the mind of Martin McDonough. If you’re familiar with the director’s previous work, you’ll know what I mean. In Bruges the director introduced us to two squabbling hitmen as they grew bored on a European getaway. Seven Psychopaths featured a sextuplet of amoral thieves and killers repeatedly undone by their own stupidity. Now his latest film; Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri tackles a police force rife with incompetence and violent misconduct.

One of the few genuinely great working-class stories to emerge in the last few years, Three Billboards…centres on Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand), a bereaved single mother who hires the titular billboards to chastise the local police force. Singling out Police Chief Bill Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) for failing to catch the man who raped and murdered her daughter. In Mildred’s eyes the local police are ‘too busy torturing black folk’ to solve the case. Said torturer being his loyal lapdog Officer Jason Dixon, whose crimes Willoughby nervously dismisses.

Now, make no mistake the film is very good. Funny, poignant and dark, with outstanding performances from McDormand and Rockwell. Yet this is another instance of a white director, using a white lead, to cover an issue which predominantly affects people of colour. Early last year the American Public Health Association published a report that found that Black and Hispanic males were almost twice as likely to be killed by police force than their white counterparts. While Mildred’s rage over her daughter’s death is legitimate it pales in comparison to the 55% of black homicides that go unsolved in the US every year. McDonough is a talented storyteller but his distance from the issue inevitably leads him to belie it. Predominantly in the way he frames Willoughby and Dixon.

Admittedly Harrelson can play Willoughby as an authoritarian brute, bearing down on Mildred in an interrogation room, delivering threats to ruin her life. All to quickly though the film will undercut this performance with reminders of his humanity, his vulnerability. He is introduced to us as a family man, he spends time with Mildred earnestly insisting that he wants to find her daughter’s killer. And then there’s the kicker, he has a terminal illness. It feels like at every step we’re encouraged to sympathise with this spineless brute. A man who not only enables Dixon’s crimes but lavishes praise on him. Honestly at times he feels like a character from a different film. One that didn’t feel like it had so much to say about systemic racism within the police.

                              

The film takes a similar approach to Dixon, easily the more reprehensible of the two. Painted by his history as a violent and unrepentant racist, having previously tortured a black suspect during interrogation. Yet we crucially never see any of this take place. The only act of racial profiling he commits during the film’s timeline is the off-screen arrest of Mildred’s friend played by Amanda Warren. When he actually shares screen-time with two African American characters they both display open contempt for him without concern for any reproach.  Remember, that this is set in a country where black children have been shot dead for playing with toy guns. Granted one of these characters is the new police chief and seeing him toss Dixon to the kerb is fully intended as a satisfying moment of catharsis. However, the ease with which Clarke Peters’ character can take charge of a police department supposedly mired in systemic racism one again betrays McDonough’s naivety on the subject. 

Despite what we are told about Officer Dixon his on-screen characterisation, much like Willoughby’s, feels designed to undermine his authority and engender sympathy. Members of the public freely insult him, he lives at home with his mother and whenever confronted with his wrongdoing he fearfully denies it. He’s a terrified dog ashamed to have soiled the carpet, but with no capacity to clean it. In short, he’s a far cry from real-life officers like Brian Encinia; the state trooper who violently apprehended Sandra Bland shortly before she died in custody or former Officer Philip Braisford who shot a suspect with an AR-15 as he begged for his life earlier this year. These are officers who confidently committed violent acts and remain unapologetic about it to this day.  No provocation, no denials and no remorse. That’s the kind of misconduct McDonough supposedly seeks to comment upon and woefully fails at. 

Now, I’m not saying I wanted Three Billboards… to feature scenes of violence against African Americans. In case it’s not clear I see enough of that on the news. And yes, we should afford McDonough some artistic license to deviate from reality. After all, no one was expecting him to remake Serpico. It’s only natural that characters like Willoughby and Dixon should warrant fleshing-out, even humanising. But comparing these two goofballs to the actual cases of police misconduct rings not of humanizing them, but romanticising. Comical romanisation to be sure, on par with say, McDonough making a version of Spotlight where the priests acted like Pepe Le Pew. But making lazy, corrupt and violent cops the butt of the joke is a long way off examining the incendiary issure here. In doing so McDonough blurs the reality behind the devastation these corrupt institutions wreak on communities. Mischaracterising both the officers responsible and the issue Three Billboards… seeks to shine a light on.