A Sizzling Pile of Poo

Rating: 1/10 (29 December 2017)

It's exceedingly rare that I hand out 10s or 1s -- I reserve these for the perfect, and perfectly hideous, and neither is easy to come by. (I also elevate a score when something is of the "so bad it's kind of great" variety, like "The Room" or "Oogieloves and the Big Balloon Adventure"). "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" (which is one of the most awful titles in ages) is that rare find: something perfectly bad with zero redeeming qualities.
The plot seems to hinge on a woman hellbent on finding the man who raped and killed her daughter -- ooh, a revenge mystery! Actually, this crime, like everything else in the film, is just a self-consciously writerly device to get people to bloviate in the same tone with each other on sundry topics that have nothing to do with the crime. There's a deep well of syrup and cornball below the acid river of misanthropic shit that flows through every scene. There isn't an ounce of sincerity in anyone's relation to another -- it's all pure manipulation, formulaic broad strokes that in every aspect have been done better 100 or 1000 times already. Lots of decent actors have "big moment" cries, but it's all empty, hollow-ringing verbiage.
Had I but world enough and time, I'd gleefully dissect this abortive mess, and I concede this is more an "F-U" to the director/writer than a review, but I already feel my life wasting away minutes as I contemplate this execrable film past its due.