A Modern but Timeless Parable About Revenge

Rating: 9/10 (18 January 2018)

"Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" is promoted as a "black comedy crime film," but the truth is that it's a modern parable about revenge and the only thing funny about it is the sad irony of what can happen by giving in to this most basic of human inclinations, no matter how apparently justified.
Martin McDonagh, who wrote, produced and directed the film, reportedly was inspired after seeing billboards about an unsolved crime while traveling "somewhere down in the Georgia, Florida, Alabama corner."
The film is fictional, but the script and the performances ring as true and as realistic as something that might happen in today's world in any town in America.
Frances McDormand plays Mildred Hayes, a bitterly divorced mother still aching over the unsolved rape and murder of her teenage daughter, Angela, seven months before.
Furious over what she perceives as foot-dragging on the case, she empties her bank account to pay for three billboards just outside of town. They read, successively: "RAPED WHILE DYING," "AND STILL NO ARRESTS?", and "HOW COME, CHIEF WILLOUGHBY?"
Townspeople are upset over the billboards, but none as much as Sheriff Bill Willoughby (Woody Harrelson), whose profane good-old-boy manner belies a complex human being, a doting husband and father at home who is a savvy, tough-as-nails peace officer on the job. He's also dying of pancreatic cancer.
Willoughby is sympathetic to Mildred's plight, explaining the legal constraints he is under, but she will have none of it and refuses to remove the signs. As a result, she and her son, Robbie (Lucas Hedges, so effective in "Manchester By the Sea") face all sorts of harassment by the townspeople, including that by Mildred's abusive ex-husband, Charlie (John Hawkes), an ex-cop living with a dim but well-meaning 19-year-old Penelope (Samara Weaving), who offers perhaps the most accurate summation of the story with a phrase that she said she read on a bookmark.
In the midst of all of this is Deputy Sheriff Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell), an ignorant racist who never seems to understand exactly what is happening but overreacts in very much the wrong way to that which he does.
To reveal any more would give away the many surprising twists both in plot and character development.
The film is meticulously thought out and though timeless in its point, is particularly applicable to today's society in which all too many people act out their emotions in a violent way, horrible consequences notwithstanding.
The casting and performances are nigh-on perfect, top to bottom, with McDormand, Harrelson and Rockwell especially stunning.
"Three Billboards" is Oscar-worthy across the board, and would stack up against any best picture nominee, past or present.