Throughout Martin McDonagh’s film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, we follow several characters that showcase their frustration at the world around them. There’s Mildred (Frances McDormand) who’s anger towards the justice system over her daughter’s murder prompts her to put up three billboards targeting the police on their neglect of the case. This action causes her son Robbie (Lucas Hedges) to resent his mother’s protest as it causes him to be tormented at school. Mildred’s ex-husband Charlie (John Hawkes) is also against the billboards, and antagonizes his ex-wife to take them down throughout the film.
Of course the Ebbing police department aren’t exactly thrilled about the billboards either. Sheriff Willoughby (Woody Harrelson), who is directly called out on one of the billboards, is consumed by the frustrations of his life on three fronts: the billboards, the cold case itself, and his recent cancer diagnosis. The latter eventually leads him to take his own life, although the entire town thinks that Mildred’s signs are the real cause of his death. Then there is Officer Dixon (Sam Rockwell) who is by far the most physically angry person in the film. His resentment over his his life, causes him to get into many physical alterations throughout the film, including a one shot sequence which ends with him throwing Red Welby (Caleb Landry Jones) out of a second story window.
But even with this intense scene in mind, it's Dixon who goes through the most change in the film. From the moment we meet him, when he finds the billboards going up Easter Sunday night, he is a short fuse around the entire situation, getting into an argument with one of the workers, Jerome. Through this conversation we also learn that Dixon has a past of racially aggravated violence against black people, something Jerome isn’t afraid to shy away from. Dixon’s mile-per-minute scenes don’t stop until over halfway through the film when he is fired from the police department over his incident with Red. Since being an officer, and someday a detective, is the entirety of Dixon’s life, this firing is a big wake up call for him. His call to action soon follows after he reads letter written to him by Willoughb’s letter to him, which makes him realize that his recent firing may actually only be the start of his career.
From then on we see an entirely new character, evidenced by the bar sequence near the end of the film. In this scene, Dixon over hears someone talking about a crime they committed that sounds eerily similar to Mildred’s daughters murder months prior. Through this heart racing sequence, where we would expect Dixon to leap into action without thinking, he actually takes a few minutes to assess the situation, including getting the man’s car information and seeing his face. It’s only after this that we see the old Dixon resurfice when he scratches the man, collecting his DNA in the process, which starts a brawl between the two. But to Dixon’s credit this was part of a thought out plan.
Although he is only a supporting character, Dixon’s story is what makes Three Billboards so impactful. Although by the end of the film the case is no closer to being solved, Dixon is heading towards Mildred’s desire for the case to be solved. This is what makes the ending of the film so bittersweet. Because even though no one has been found for committing the murder, the bond between Mildred and Dixon at the end of the film shows promise, because of everyone in the police department or the entire town for that matter, no one expected Dixon to be the one openly supporting Mildred’s cause. It’s because of this that although the film’s ending is open for interpretation in many ways, whether or not the billboards were effective is clear.
