Review of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) by Rob C — 17 Jan 2018

This is an intense experience. The "three billboards" in the title suit the focus of the film very fittingly in a number of ways. These billboards become instruments of the bereavement, frustration, and unrest in the heart of a mother (in a truly epic performance by Frances McDormand) whose daughter had been raped, burned, and murdered several months prior.

The audience soon learns that the mother's afflictions are justified as these billboards and the message they are chosen to convey act also as a foreboding introduction to this troubled town and as a catalyst for further events to occur and ancillary tensions to brew.

The town is centered around a corrupt and discriminatory police force that has neglected their difficult cases and have yet to find a resolution for the death of the mother's daughter. Simply through this, the billboards are transformed into an advertisement of grief, an intended wake-up call fueled through anger, a symbol of injustice on behalf of the Ebbing Police Department, which leads to what this film is really about.

It focuses on and explores the effects of grief and injustice on people and the ones around them while highlighting the extent these people will go to make things right or even just to have closure. The film is very forward and blunt in expressing itself, enough to the point of even feeling a bit offensive.

However, throughout the course of the film, things happen, and the audience comes to sympathize with these unforgiving characters and smile at their black humor. Through these feelings, a deeper moral in the film is translucently revealed in that perhaps what this town truly needs is its fair share of love and forgiveness, a realization that would have never come to light had it not been for those three billboards.

This is a fantastic and powerful film, deep-rooted in its subject and determined in its message while also clearly and realistically aware that, like many murder cases, grief is never truly resolved. Definite Oscar Best Picture nominee here.