Entertaining, but a little forced in parts

Rating: 7/10 (3 February 2018)

Three Billboards sets up its protagonist's reputation as an unfearing ball-breaker right from the start; A hard-faced Frances McDormand swaggers into the office of an advertising agency, and with a wad of cash and a toilet-mouth, obtains three disused billboards with the plan to shame the police officers responsible for her daughter's murder case into action.
The film is fast paced, dynamically shot and well acted, with a twisty plot and a cast of flawed, but likable characters who shift and challenge expectations. I mostly enjoyed it, but I couldn't shake some niggling problems with the screenplay.
Much of the 'humour' relies on characters being needlessly acerbic to one another, flinging vulgar insults and random groin kicks around for a cheap laugh, which for the first 40 minutes of character set up, feels contrived, tedious and unrealistic. It doesn't take long to see a pattern emerge in these exchanges, which always show Mildred coming out on top, usually by just dropping an F-bomb and swaggering out of the room. You know, for example, as soon as the parish priest comes round for tea, that it won't be long before she makes some barb about buggering alter boys. The audience I watched it with laughed a lot at these moments, but I found myself barely making a smirk.
What also bothered me was the blatant leftist social justice propaganda behind a lot of this. It's like Mildred sometimes just becomes a meme-megaphone for 'sticking it to the man', in this case the useless white cops who are presented as a bunch of dumb, redneck racists "too busy torturing black people" to do what's right. The director may as well have dressed her in a Black Lives Matter T-shirt (I suppose it's no coincidence Mildred, always clad in overalls, bears a resemblance to the ubiquitous "We Can Do It" poster).
Those gripes aside, the second half of the film really opens up the character arcs with an unexpected turn that delivers more unexpected turns, higher stakes and the potential for redemption. Throughout the film, McDormand delivers a stellar performance that shows vulnerability beneath her hard exterior and the supporting actors do a terrific job. Recommended, but not a Best Picture winner for me.