three billboards outside ebbing missouri

Following a rudimentary check of the legal restrictions on billboard advertising, she has three signs put up, their blunt messages in boldface uppercase on a blood-red background reading, in order: Raped While Dying And Still No Arrests How Come, Chief Willoughby? It’s been months since Mildred heard a word from cops about the investigation of her teenage daughter’s horrific rape and murder by incineration, so she takes radical steps to light a flame under the ass of local law enforcement. Fox Searchlight has a real ripper on its hands with this one, even if it likely won’t be for mainstream tastes. A stupendous showcase for the formidable gifts of McDormand that also provides plum roles for Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell, this is a corrosively humorous drama of festering injustice, Shakespearean rage, grave reckoning and imperfect redemption, which unfolds with the epic dimensions of a classic Western showdown. Instead, they loom like desolate memories of a time of prosperity and happiness, suggesting a Walker Evans image of a Great Depression highway to a place beyond hope.Īfter the entertainingly larkish but low-caloric carnage of Seven Psychopaths, McDonagh returns here to the peak form of his debut feature In Bruges, and of his best work for the stage. There’s no such reassurance in the tattered signage standing abandoned in the morning mist in the opening shots of Martin McDonagh’s blisteringly funny and richly textured third feature, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

The roadside billboard is an iconic feature of the Americana landscape, with quaintly illustrated graphics welcoming travelers, offering hot coffee, comfort food and a warm hotel bed, or bidding farewell to those departing, often with a folksy “Y’all come back now”-type sentiment.

Three billboards outside ebbing missouri