A great and memorable addition to McDonagh's quirky filmography

Rating: 8/10 (1 August 2018)

A grieving mother hires three disused billboards to berate the local police force into action regarding the brutal murder of her daughter much to the anger of some of the townsfolk.
Martin McDonagh has done it again. Not content to leave well alone in the 'dark comedy in a serious situation' department following Seven Psychopaths and In Bruges, he's pulled together another masterpiece of this difficult genre. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (don't worry, it took me a few attempts to remember the full name too) shows McDonagh isn't done with it yet.
The first shots in the film show the dilapidated, unused and unloved billboards in a haze of early morning mist. These establishing shots begin a trend of scenes being rarely framed poorly, or lit and filtered without careful consideration of mood. Likewise, there are scenes that linger for just the right amount of time for the audience to contemplate the consequences and next actions.
Frances McDormand's portrayal of a mother hell-bent on getting justice for her murdered daughter and the personal pain she feels every day from the fractured relationship they endured when she was alive. The Best Actress Oscar she was rightly awarded was never in doubt given the clean sweep she enjoyed all through the awards season - it's certainly well-earned for her ability to carry a script that demands both dramatic and comedic moments, often in the same scene.
Sam Rockwell earns his Oscar win for Best Supporting Actor as the dim-witted and racist cop Dixon. It would've been so easy to play him exactly as he sounds - a bumbling idiotic caricature of violent cops seen all too often on the news in recent years, but Rockwell adds layers and hidden flaws to this fractured and troubled character.
To talk about the multiple moments in which Woody Harrelson brings his embattled Chief Willoughby to vivid (and on occasion heart-breaking) life would be to reveal too much about particular moments in the film that are best left to the audience to uncover for themselves. Harrison was rightly nominated for the Best supporting Actor gong for is efforts, although Rockwell was always going to beat him to the top prize.
It's a much darker film than you might expect from the trailer: there's detailed discussions of the rape and grizzly murder of a teenage girl, incredibly violent and graphic fight scenes (mostly very one-sided), and moments of such heavy emotional weight that the person next to me in the cinema started crying. The film ranks among McDonagh's most serious work yet, but the injection of his trademark humour (a 'blink and you'll miss it' line of dialogue or a subtle piece of physical comedy courtesy of Rockwell) makes it one of his funniest.