An acting masterclass from a flawed script

Rating: 8/10 (5 March 2018)

An acting masterclass from a flawed script.
Like Blue Jasmine a few years ago (and as I correctly predicted then for that film in my imdb review), Three Billboards is an acting masterclass which deserves to win most of the acting Oscars soon in 2018.
This film also once again illustrates the strange, improbable fact that - incredibly - the rarest contemporary commodity in Hollywood is the simplest and most basic one, you would think: a scripted story which makes a worthwhile statement and wraps up nicely and convincingly at the end.
While we can go along with the proposed Dirty Harry Redneck philosophy up to a point, and enjoy the general redemption towards the end, the final scene crazily seems to have been adlibbed after the writer died suddenly before considering his options for it.
It would behove anyone studying to be a contemporary scriptwriter to sit down and have a look at The Third Man and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, to name just two masterpieces, to see how an ending is done.
Pity one should have to point such obviousness out, when so much else in this film - and certainly the several principal performances - is so memorably good and they will land Oscars tonight.