Ebbing away

Rating: 1/10 (3 June 2018)

I'm not much of a fan of the whole Coen Brothers non-linear method of film making I have to say and identified quite early on that this particular movie fell squarely into whatever category that might be. I guess I should have known from the offbeat title and cast that things would go every which way but loose and so it proves.
The initial idea of angry mother Frances McDormand broadcasting her frustration at her local police division by paying for three adjacent billboards to highlight their inaction over the unsolved rape and murder of her daughter some seven months previously might have worked in my view, not least as a whodunit, but was soon swamped by the introduction of several unusual characters and as many unlikely situations.
So we're introduced soon enough to Woody Harrelson's terminally ill chief of police who McDormand's character names and shames on the billboards, Sam Rockwell as his mother-fixated, redneck deputy, with many more minor characters too numerous to mention, like the dwarf who alibis MacDormand at an important moment in the story, her abusive ex-husband now dating a 19 year old pretty bimbo and the new black chief of police who takes over Harrelson's job and whose first action is to overlook Rockwell's near-murder of the homosexual young owner of the billboard company with whom it's fair to say, he doesn't see eye to eye.
The movie is a succession of tangential plot shifts and unbelievable coincidence. No doubt the writer - director was presenting us with themes of forgiveness, redemption and guilt set in the backward-thinking, crazy-quilt Deep South just to double underline these issues and make the viewer think deeply about all this serious existential stuff y'all.
Sorry, but I didn't buy any of it. The acting didn't impress me much either, and that includes McDormand's Oscar-winning turn. In the end, for me, it was just another of those eccentric, eclectic films that tries to implant what it thinks are memorable images or extraordinary characters into the viewer's consciousness and by its exaggeration and distortion somehow mirror society in some profound way. All I got from it in the end was a mixed sense of manipulation, confusion and cynicism and how easy it is to put a movie like this together and call it art.
Sorry, not for me and you can broadcast that on any billboard you care to mention.