Annoying, contrived, ludicrous, bizarre and ends like Episode 1 of a TV show.

Rating: 4/10 (12 November 2018)

A summary to save reading the full review:
A film with many subplots and setups that go nowhere, so much so that at the end if felt like a pilot episode for a TV series. Contrived jokes, most of the characters are idiots and everyone is seemingly able to commit serious crimes and get away with it.
Brimming with unlikeable characters, the first hour of this film just annoyed me because it felt like every character was an idiot. Some were deliberate idiots (like Rockwell's character), some were accidental idiots - like Harrelson's character for example, who retained the racist, homophobic, unintelligent and aggressive, bullying Rockwell on his police force. Harrelson's character also commits an unexplainable act half way in. And no, his justifications did not make sense of it. It was, it seemed to me, a contrived effort to effect 'change' in the story and its characters. Tacky at best. Tsch!
There were many more idiots and many more idiotic behaviours from characters who otherwise seemed 'normal' up to that point. Like the kid of McDormand. How old was he? 17? In a rather ridiculous breakfast scene he gets milk and cereal all over his head and when his wife-beating father turns up he giggles like a schoolgirl and goes dashing out of the house like a puppy, with said detritus all over his head. Was this idiotic behaviour supposed to be funny? It's a rather contrived joke isn't it? But hang on, then when his dad turns a bit aggressive, puppy dog turns superhero, bounding like a ninja and deftly swiping a knife which he then places around his father's neck. Yeah, whatever. One second he's "yay, yay, daddy", the next he's got a knife against his neck.
This film is full of those contrived jokes ( as in the cereal-on-head one mentioned above). Rather pathetically and in what I would call a very low form of humour, several 'jokes' rely on idiotic behaviour by young women who are portrayed as being brainless imbeciles ("I learnt that phrase from a book I read about polio. Is it called polio? That game with horses?") There are few young women in this film but they are all portrayed in this manner, i.e. they're morons. Has the writer/director got a problem with young women?
A film full of idiots is not necessarily a bad thing. I like Naked Gun. But put the idiots from Naked Gun into a 'serious' setting and it just doesn't work. The characters in this film aren't likeable or realistic idiots, they are either just vile or behave stupidly for comedy value. And that's pretty low brow humour. What you end up with is a bizarre mix of the serious and the stupid and it just doesn't work. Yes you can have black humour in serious films. Sometimes it can be unsettling, sometimes it can bring much needed tension relief. But in this film the comedy element is off and it just doesn't work.
I found the first hour of the film unbearable. The last 45 minutes improved BUT only because it seemed like it was finally going somewhere and then...it didn't. Subplots came and went, as did characters who at first seemed significant then do little after a key scene (for example, the new Sheriff who replaces Woody Harrelson. He comes in bold as brass, kicks a few asses, gives you the impression things are about to happen in the film and then he practically disappears for the rest of it, popping up here and there in minor scenes!)
Also annoying was the ludicrous ability for all characters to commit serious crimes and yet not get arrested. Rockwell beats up a guy and throws him out of a first-story window onto a main road, in broad daylight and directly opposite the police station AND observed by the new Sheriff. McDormand torches the police station and beats up high school kids. Her ex-husband burns down the billboards referred to in the title. No one gets done for anything. It's daft.
At the end I really felt like I'd just watched a pilot episode to a TV show (one where most of the characters are unlikeable imbeciles and everyone is above the law BTW). It set up many things to be explored and then didn't explore them.
Weird.