Oscar winner Frances McDormand plays nonsense divorced mom Mildred raising her son Robbie (Oscar nominee Lucas Hedges) after her daughter Angela is raped while dying in the sleepy town of Ebbing, Missouri. One day Mildred decides to rent the three billboards on the road to her house just on the outskirts of town to send a message to Chief Willoby (Woody Harrelson) so he can get the ball rolling on her daughter's rapist/killer. Sam Rockwell plays Jason Dickson, Chief's right hand. All sounds good right? Even Peter Dinklage is there as the nice guy who has a crush on Mildred. All of these actors deserve Oscar nominations because of how far they raise the bar in this script.
The 2 points are deducted from this not so great script. In fact it's as if several people wrote this and had their own versions of what should happen at the end.
First everyone ignores the fact that HER DAUGHTER was raped while dying and simply characterizes Mildred as a crazy lady when she puts the billboards up. NO ONE in town likes the billboards even though they don't say one bad thing about Chief Willoby just posing questions to him. The man running the advertising agency is treated like crap as well. Even the town priest gets involved in shaming Mildred. The writing is super one sided to the point when the billboards first go up (Raped While Dying....And Still No Arrests....How Come, Chief Willoby?) Chief Willoby says to his wife "Oh this is war." WHY!? I don't get it. Are we suppose to side with him or her? I despise one-sided writing. It's lazy and not entertaining.
By the end of the movie so many things happen executed by both Mildred and other townsfolks that aren't even complicated they are convulted, I couldn't wait for the movie to be over. The ending was strange with lots of unanswered questions...in a bad way not a good way.
To be honest after going through my full assessment of the film I am going to have to knock it down again. 2 stars out of 5. Just a terrible, terrible, terrible script. Shame on the writer for survivor shaming a family. Yes it's fiction, but not very good fiction at all. Shoulda known when the title simply wasn't "The Three Billboards" though. Keep in mind the critics loved it; Emmy did not.