A darkly comic, morally complex masterpiece

Rating: 9/10 (5 December 2017)

Frances McDormand's daughter was raped and murdered, and it seems like no movement has happened on the case in months. Noticing three derelict billboards on a largely unused stretch of road just out of town, she rents them and puts up a personal challenge to local police chief Woody Harrelson. The police department, especially thuggish cop Sam Rockwell, are very unhappy about this turn of events. The town is divided. Harrelson is a popular man, but the department has a history of mistreating the town's less fortunate citizens (particularly the African American population), so many folks like seeing them called to task. This sets up what seems to be a very straightforward "little guy vs authority" story, but McDonagh has a more morally complex story in mind. Harrelson is a dying man, suffering from terminal cancer, and his explanation of why the case has gone nowhere seems quite reasonable. McDormand is suffering from understandable grief, but you learn that some of the grief might stem from a feeling of personal responsibility for the tragedy. Good characters do some really bad things. Bad characters commit horrifically violent actions, but then suffer from violence due to heroically self-sacrificing acts. Besides being a serious meditation on grief and revenge, it's also very darkly comic.