A country crime story NOT in Missouri

Rating: 7/10 (21 March 2018)

A girl has been raped and murdered in a small town. After a few months there is still no suspect to be found. How comes? The desperate mother of the victim places exactly this question on 3 huge billboards just out of town.
The reaction of the small town community and its authorities towards this provocation of the police is then in the center of the movie. The idea to use a crime as a means to unmask the hypocrisy and missing solidarity of a society put to test may not be completely new, but it can still be good entertainment if it is done in a decent way as it is the case in 3 billboards.
The quality of acting is good. Otherwise the picturing of complex characters drawn from real life would not work out so fine. Most impressive to me was the acting performance of Sam Rockwell, which can be truly described as Oscar worthy. I was not quite as impressed by the part of Frances McDormand, who initially drew me into the movie, because I liked her so much in Fargo. Probably she did not have the opportunity to show a wide enough range of emotions in this rather "Eastwoodian" character.
Sometimes I was quite surprised how far some of the protagonists could go in their aggressions without being sued or arrested. Be it, movie theatre does not necessarily mean real life.
The movie is also good in tackling other disputable issues like e.g. today's role of the Church as a moral authority. Also the fact that American soldiers have committed shameful deeds in the Middle East is proposed.
I also liked the film's sort of loose ending. To me, however, it is quite clear that the original purpose of the started trip will not be met.
When watching the movie I was also quite puzzled that the fictional town called Ebbing, Missouri, was surrounded by such a hilly, almost mountainous landscape, whereas I thought that wide plains are predominant in the Mid-Western countries. It turns out that the film was actually shot in and around Ashville, North Carolina. What's the point of this? If a movie happens to play in a fictional place, why not give it a name where the landscape does correspond with the name of the movie. This may seem to be an unimportant fact but I got a feeling from this that the movie does not take the spectator all too serious.