10 Incredible 2017 Movie Characters
2. Mildred Hayes - Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Francis McDormund was built for a role like this. Mildred Hayes is a take no prisoners kind of woman - crass, aggressive, and bitter, she decides to go to war on her local police force because they're unable to solve the murder of her daughter. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri starts with that extreme decision, and then lets its characters spin out of control in one of the most morally uncertain films of 2017.
Mildred could easily have been depicted as a paragon, but writer/director Martin McDonagh had other plans. Three Billboards is a movie entirely about the unhealthy outlets people find for discontent and frustration. Mildred is allowed to do horrible things during the course of the film, and McDormund commits to the bleak determination of her character with gusto. There's no line she won't cross in order to get the justice her daughter deserves.
The first female-lead McDonagh project since 1996's Beauty Queen of Leenane, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is jam-packed with emotionally stunted and profoundly frustrated characters. Mildred is a force of righteous anger, and her desperation to cling to any hope of justice forms the heart of this anti-parable. But perhaps her most powerful scene in the film is when she encounters a deer outside one of the titular billboards. In this brief moment, we see that beneath her calloused exterior, Mildred still has a heart - however beaten and bruised it may be.