A masterful triumph of a movie from the guy that made that little masterpiece, The Guard, and In Bruges, amongst many other worthy movies. Frances McDormand is dominant and believable. She’s not to be taken lightly, and is a tour-de-force of emotion and skill within her craft.
All the other actors add value to the clever plot, especially Sam Rockwell and Woody Harrelson.
This is a movie to buy, as it can be watched many times and always with joy.
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Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (4K Ultra HD)
Martin McDonagh
(Director),
Caleb Landry Jones
(Actor),
Sam Rockwell
(Actor)
&
0
more Format: Blu-ray
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Genre | Drama |
Format | 4K |
Contributor | Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson, Caleb Landry Jones, Frances McDormand, Martin McDonagh |
Language | English |
Runtime | 115 minutes |
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Product description
A mother personally challenges the local authorities to solve her daughter's murder when they fail to catch the culprit.
Product details
- Language : English
- Product dimensions : 1.4 x 13.5 x 19.1 cm; 80 Grams
- Item Model Number : 95891SBG
- Director : Martin McDonagh
- Media Format : 4K
- Run time : 115 minutes
- Release date : 16 May 2018
- Actors : Caleb Landry Jones, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson, Frances McDormand
- Studio : 20th Century Fox
- ASIN : B07BQNDXC5
- Country of origin : Australia
- Number of discs : 1
- Best Sellers Rank: 3,570 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
- 2,792 in Movies (Movies & TV)
- Customer Reviews:
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4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
3,263 global ratings
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Reviewed in Australia on 28 May 2021
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TOP 100 REVIEWER
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One of the best films I’ve seen in a longing time. Superb acting from all actors with a story that slowly unfolds. Lots of Academy Award wins for good reason too!
Reviewed in Australia on 7 February 2021
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Right from the first few scenes, beautifully shot. Great dialogue, dark humour. Smart, weird, funny, sad, you name it.
4.0 out of 5 stars
If You like Cohen Bros films, then this will feel famiiar. A respectful nod to the genre.
Reviewed in Australia on 21 February 2021Verified Purchase
Understated, almost daring you to guess where the script goes next. A woman whose actions in pursuit of her quest for justice defy prediction as much as they do normal social constraint.
Reviewed in Australia on 16 December 2020
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Loved this.
Scense of humour and sticking it to the man.good script.great actress that always brings it in every role
Scense of humour and sticking it to the man.good script.great actress that always brings it in every role
Reviewed in Australia on 18 May 2021
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Loved it, so raw & in your face. A must see!!
Reviewed in Australia on 11 May 2021
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Frances McDormand is just an outstanding actor. I came back to watch this after I have seen Nomadland, and I am just impressed with the acting.
Reviewed in Australia on 29 June 2021
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Ok so it does not show the best side of human behaviour, but I think it is real and well portrayed by the actors.
Top reviews from other countries

Tristram Shandy
5.0 out of 5 stars
Martin McDonagh: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) *****
Reviewed in Germany on 30 August 2018Verified Purchase
INHALT
Als die alleinerziehende Mutter Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand), deren Tochter vor sieben Monaten nach einer brutalen Vergewaltigung getötet worden ist, auf ihrem Heimweg an drei alten Reklametafeln vorbeikommt, verfällt sie auf eine provokante Idee: Mit drei kurzen Slogans macht sie auf juristisch unverfängliche Weise den geachteten Sheriff Willoughby (Woody Harrelsen) dafür verantwortlich, daß noch keine Verhaftung vorgenommen wurde. Während der Sheriff, der an Bauchspeicheldrüsenkrebs leidet und bald sterben wird, sich durch diese Billboards ungerechtfertigterweise angegriffen fühlt, weiß er doch, daß er nach seinem Ermessen als Mögliche getan hat, um den Fall zu klären, gerät die Welt für seinen geistig recht einfach gestrickten und den Vorurteilen des alten Südens anhängenden Deputy Dixon (Sam Rockwell) durch diese Provokation aus den Fugen, und er glaubt sich im Recht, zu den drastischsten Maßnahmen zu greifen, um dafür zu sorgen, daß Mildreds Billboards verschwinden.
KURZKRITIK
„All this anger, man, it just begets greater anger.”
Nachdem ich bereits “7 Psychos” (2012) von Martin McDonagh gesehen hatte, waren meine Erwartungen hinsichtlich „Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri“ (2017) entsprechend hoch, und sie wurden dennoch insgesamt sogar übertroffen. Es wäre unfair, bei einem neuen Film zu stark auf Handlungselemente und Charaktere einzugehen, aber soviel sei gesagt: Der Zuschauer darf sich besonders im Hinblick auf letztere auf manche Überraschung einstellen, denn McDonagh begnügt sich nicht damit, die Figuren in gut und böse einzuteilen, wie dies oft in vergleichbaren Rachegeschichten der Fall ist. Im Gegenteil, Mildred, für die man anfangs noch starke Sympathien und großes Verständnis aufbringen mag – Frances McDormand leistet in der Darstellung dieser verhärmten Mutter wirklich Großartiges –, entpuppt sich immer mehr als eine verbitterte und haßerfüllte Frau, die in ihrem Gram Zuflucht in totalitaristischen Allmachtsphantasien sucht – bei allen männlichen Babys bei der Geburt gleich eine DNA-Probe zu nehmen und diese für den Fall eines Verbrechens in einer Datenbank zu speichern, ist eine von diesen Ideen – und die auch schon einmal handgreiflich wird. Offen bleibt, ob das Verbrechen an ihrer Tochter – sie erinnert sich an den letzten Abschied, der kein sehr schöner war – sie zu einer solch bitteren Frau gemacht hat, oder ob sie nicht durch viele kleinere und größere Verletzungen an Leib und Seele zu eben dieser Frau geworden ist. Ähnlich ist es übrigens mit Deputy Dixon, der anfangs vor allem als typischer Redneck, als Muttersöhnchen und gefährlich-aggressive, letztlich aber auch lächerliche Dumpfbacke gezeichnet wird: Irgendwann eröffnen sich dem Zuschauer allerdings Dimensionen dieses Mannes, und wir erkennen: Hinter jedem Menschen steckt eine Geschichte. Wir müssen diesen Menschen deshalb vielleicht nicht mögen, können uns aber besser erklären, warum er zu dem geworden ist, was wir sehen, und ob da nicht noch mehr ist, was wir eben nicht sehen. Der Sheriff jedenfalls glaubt an das Potential, das in Dixon steckt, auch wenn uns dies schwerfallen mag.
Insgesamt läßt sich sagen, daß eines für mich diesen Film positiv von vielen anderen zeitgenössischen Filmen abhebt, und zwar gleichermaßen von den zuckersüßen Sentimentalkomödchen, den auf Political Correctness getrimmten didaktischen Langeweilern, die die Menschen in ihrem stupiden Sendungsbewußtsein von oben herab in Gut und Böse aufteilen, wobei sie sich erschreckend einfacher Kategorien bedienen, aber auch von den zynisch-pseudocoolen Machwerken aus der Tarantino-Suppenküche, in denen der Blick hinter die Kulissen menschlichen Verhaltens immer nur vorgetäuscht wird. Interessanterweise rechnet McDonagh schon in „7 Psychos“ zu Beginn mit den zwei Killer-Talking-Heads, die das geschwätzige, letztlich bedeutungslose Tarantinoese absondern, auf sehr eindringliche Weise ab. Was, wie gesagt, „Three Billboards“ unter all diesen zeitgenössischen Filmen auszeichnet, ist seine Fähigkeit, ein von Sympathie und Humanität getragenes Interesse an seinen Figuren zu vermitteln, ohne dabei jedoch in flache Wohlfühlmoral abzugleiten. Sehr bezeichnend hierfür ist das Ende des Filmes, das manchen vielleicht nicht wirklich gefallen dürfte, dessen Aussage sich aber wundervoll auf unser aller Leben übertragen läßt. „Laß Dich nicht vom Zorn übermannen!“ raunt es aus dem Brief (und lustigerweise auch vom Lesezeichen), und doch sind wir geneigt, ins Auto zu steigen und eine Tat zu begehen, weil alles andere uns sinnlos erschiene. Allerdings kann man sich auf der Fahrt eben auch umentscheiden.
Diese unaufgeregte Humanität, der grundsätzliche Glaube an den Menschen und daran, daß sein Leben einen Sinn ergeben kann, dabei jedoch auch das Bewußtsein um die Bequemlichkeit des Menschen, in alte Muster zurückzuverfallen, aus Feigheit oder Leidenschaft die einfachste und dümmste Option zu wählen, diesen genuinen, realistischen, sich aber dem Zynismus verweigernden Humanismus, für den mir in allererster Linie Namen wie John Ford und Akira Kurosawa ein Begriff sind, den finde ich mit einem Male in einem zeitgenössischen Film – eben in „Three Billboards“.
Dafür ziehe ich meinen Hut vor Martin McDonagh.
Als die alleinerziehende Mutter Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand), deren Tochter vor sieben Monaten nach einer brutalen Vergewaltigung getötet worden ist, auf ihrem Heimweg an drei alten Reklametafeln vorbeikommt, verfällt sie auf eine provokante Idee: Mit drei kurzen Slogans macht sie auf juristisch unverfängliche Weise den geachteten Sheriff Willoughby (Woody Harrelsen) dafür verantwortlich, daß noch keine Verhaftung vorgenommen wurde. Während der Sheriff, der an Bauchspeicheldrüsenkrebs leidet und bald sterben wird, sich durch diese Billboards ungerechtfertigterweise angegriffen fühlt, weiß er doch, daß er nach seinem Ermessen als Mögliche getan hat, um den Fall zu klären, gerät die Welt für seinen geistig recht einfach gestrickten und den Vorurteilen des alten Südens anhängenden Deputy Dixon (Sam Rockwell) durch diese Provokation aus den Fugen, und er glaubt sich im Recht, zu den drastischsten Maßnahmen zu greifen, um dafür zu sorgen, daß Mildreds Billboards verschwinden.
KURZKRITIK
„All this anger, man, it just begets greater anger.”
Nachdem ich bereits “7 Psychos” (2012) von Martin McDonagh gesehen hatte, waren meine Erwartungen hinsichtlich „Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri“ (2017) entsprechend hoch, und sie wurden dennoch insgesamt sogar übertroffen. Es wäre unfair, bei einem neuen Film zu stark auf Handlungselemente und Charaktere einzugehen, aber soviel sei gesagt: Der Zuschauer darf sich besonders im Hinblick auf letztere auf manche Überraschung einstellen, denn McDonagh begnügt sich nicht damit, die Figuren in gut und böse einzuteilen, wie dies oft in vergleichbaren Rachegeschichten der Fall ist. Im Gegenteil, Mildred, für die man anfangs noch starke Sympathien und großes Verständnis aufbringen mag – Frances McDormand leistet in der Darstellung dieser verhärmten Mutter wirklich Großartiges –, entpuppt sich immer mehr als eine verbitterte und haßerfüllte Frau, die in ihrem Gram Zuflucht in totalitaristischen Allmachtsphantasien sucht – bei allen männlichen Babys bei der Geburt gleich eine DNA-Probe zu nehmen und diese für den Fall eines Verbrechens in einer Datenbank zu speichern, ist eine von diesen Ideen – und die auch schon einmal handgreiflich wird. Offen bleibt, ob das Verbrechen an ihrer Tochter – sie erinnert sich an den letzten Abschied, der kein sehr schöner war – sie zu einer solch bitteren Frau gemacht hat, oder ob sie nicht durch viele kleinere und größere Verletzungen an Leib und Seele zu eben dieser Frau geworden ist. Ähnlich ist es übrigens mit Deputy Dixon, der anfangs vor allem als typischer Redneck, als Muttersöhnchen und gefährlich-aggressive, letztlich aber auch lächerliche Dumpfbacke gezeichnet wird: Irgendwann eröffnen sich dem Zuschauer allerdings Dimensionen dieses Mannes, und wir erkennen: Hinter jedem Menschen steckt eine Geschichte. Wir müssen diesen Menschen deshalb vielleicht nicht mögen, können uns aber besser erklären, warum er zu dem geworden ist, was wir sehen, und ob da nicht noch mehr ist, was wir eben nicht sehen. Der Sheriff jedenfalls glaubt an das Potential, das in Dixon steckt, auch wenn uns dies schwerfallen mag.
Insgesamt läßt sich sagen, daß eines für mich diesen Film positiv von vielen anderen zeitgenössischen Filmen abhebt, und zwar gleichermaßen von den zuckersüßen Sentimentalkomödchen, den auf Political Correctness getrimmten didaktischen Langeweilern, die die Menschen in ihrem stupiden Sendungsbewußtsein von oben herab in Gut und Böse aufteilen, wobei sie sich erschreckend einfacher Kategorien bedienen, aber auch von den zynisch-pseudocoolen Machwerken aus der Tarantino-Suppenküche, in denen der Blick hinter die Kulissen menschlichen Verhaltens immer nur vorgetäuscht wird. Interessanterweise rechnet McDonagh schon in „7 Psychos“ zu Beginn mit den zwei Killer-Talking-Heads, die das geschwätzige, letztlich bedeutungslose Tarantinoese absondern, auf sehr eindringliche Weise ab. Was, wie gesagt, „Three Billboards“ unter all diesen zeitgenössischen Filmen auszeichnet, ist seine Fähigkeit, ein von Sympathie und Humanität getragenes Interesse an seinen Figuren zu vermitteln, ohne dabei jedoch in flache Wohlfühlmoral abzugleiten. Sehr bezeichnend hierfür ist das Ende des Filmes, das manchen vielleicht nicht wirklich gefallen dürfte, dessen Aussage sich aber wundervoll auf unser aller Leben übertragen läßt. „Laß Dich nicht vom Zorn übermannen!“ raunt es aus dem Brief (und lustigerweise auch vom Lesezeichen), und doch sind wir geneigt, ins Auto zu steigen und eine Tat zu begehen, weil alles andere uns sinnlos erschiene. Allerdings kann man sich auf der Fahrt eben auch umentscheiden.
Diese unaufgeregte Humanität, der grundsätzliche Glaube an den Menschen und daran, daß sein Leben einen Sinn ergeben kann, dabei jedoch auch das Bewußtsein um die Bequemlichkeit des Menschen, in alte Muster zurückzuverfallen, aus Feigheit oder Leidenschaft die einfachste und dümmste Option zu wählen, diesen genuinen, realistischen, sich aber dem Zynismus verweigernden Humanismus, für den mir in allererster Linie Namen wie John Ford und Akira Kurosawa ein Begriff sind, den finde ich mit einem Male in einem zeitgenössischen Film – eben in „Three Billboards“.
Dafür ziehe ich meinen Hut vor Martin McDonagh.

J. L. Sievert
5.0 out of 5 stars
Finality
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 June 2019Verified Purchase
Anger is the main emotion in this film, followed by grief, remorse, guilt. Mildred Hayes has lost Angela, her 19-year-old daughter. She lost her to male lust, aggression, rape, murder. The rapist was never caught. Mildred seethes at those two haunting thoughts: murder and injustice. Closure isn’t possible within a broken circle. To be whole again justice must occur.
The police have done what they can in Ebbing, a small berg in Missouri in the American heartland. All leads have come to dead-ends. None of the DNA has matched up. The killer, whoever he was, is at large. Seven months have passed since the crime was committed, seven agonising months that feel like a lifetime. Time heals all wounds, the cliché says, but Mildred isn’t buying it. Wounds fester and worsen through time. Time deepens loss and pain.
The old highway outside town is abandoned now. The new freeway built a few years ago put paid to it. Nobody saunters down the highway anymore. Weeds grow tall along its verges. Three dilapidated wooden billboards still stand in a field along the highway. They once advertised things sellers wanted to sell. The messages were large, in your face, impossible to ignore as you drove past. But that was then when then was the 1980s. The world has moved on since and sales are now made in other ways, even via one clicks with a mouse. But the billboards remain, or just barely, so neglected and unimportant now that no one has bothered to chainsaw or burn them down.
One day Mildred is in her station wagon on the old highway. The billboards (three in succession) have caught her eye and she begins to slow down, finally coming to a halt on the highway. The car isn’t moving but the wheels in her head are. We watch them turn, see Mildred think. She has an idea and takes it back with her into town.
She’s upstairs in an office on Main Street in a building just across from the Ebbing Police Station. She talks to Red Welby. The billboards are owned by Red’s company. They’re still on the company books even though they haven’t brought in any revenue since 1986. Mildred is the first since then to want to use them. She isn’t selling anything. Instead she’s a buyer, and what she wants to buy is justice.
She hands Red four things: a stack of cash that totals 5,000 dollars and three slips of paper with questions written on them. Mildred wants answers to the questions, not more dead-ends, delays, police incompetence. She believes the priorities of the cops are all wrong — hassling blacks for the sake or fun of it, busting teens for dope, hauling in town drunks to dry out in jail cells at the station. Life goes on, as they say. They tried to catch Angela’s killer, but resources and manpower are thin. There’s only so much a small force can do. But Mildred won’t tolerate the excuses. She wants results. She’s demanding justice. Until it comes her soul and Angela’s will not rest. She’ll kill the killer herself if she ever gets her hands on him. When conventional justice fails the only two options left are acquiescence, meaning acceptance, or vigilante justice. Mildred Hayes is strong and resolute. She doesn’t do meek acceptance. She’s out for blood and can almost taste it in her mouth.
The last day of Angela’s life was not a good one for Mildred (or Angela). They quarrelled as they often did. Mama Protector tried to protect her wilful, spirited daughter. But Angela was having none of it, sick and tired of being treated like a child instead of an adult, or near-adult, a person with a will of her own. Defiance had become her main stance against her mother’s wishes and commands. They shouted at one another and Angela left the house in a huff. She would stay out late, get drunk, get home however and wherever since Mama wouldn’t lend her the car keys. Same old story, Angela wanting freedom, Mildred acting as warden or parole officer.
Angela thinks she’s an adult and wants to do adult things. But she’s not yet there emotionally. Her view is tinctured by teen fantasies and immaturity. She half understands adulthood, seeing the freedom but not the responsibilities in it. She could get into trouble, maybe has been in trouble before, so Mildred knows all about this.
Where is Angela’s father, a man who might bring some workable discipline to the table? He’s a drunk and wife beater who has run off with a 19-year-old bimbo. They’re shacking up together in Ebbing or some other Missouri town. So it looks like Papa wouldn’t have brought much discipline to the table anyway.
The problems of being a single mum are many. But maybe the biggest is the impossibility of being two parents in one, mother and father. It’s the reason marriage has two adults in it, one male, one female. Or conventionally it does. Such balance seems to work in raising kids, or can if the parenting team works from the same playbook. But being beaten by your drunken husband is not part of the playbook if you’re a woman and mother. Your parenting gets even harder when you’re black and blue and aching.
So Mildred and Angela argued. They fought. Angela said she’d walk home since Mama wouldn’t let her drive. Angela dared her out of spite, reminding Mildred of the danger (as if she didn’t know it already). “I might get raped,” she shouted at Mildred. She didn’t mean it or want it, but she got it. She also got death. One of Mildred’s billboards will read: “Raped while dying”.
That’s the thing. The young woman was alone. She was defenceless. Probably she was tipsy or even dizzy. She didn’t fully know what she was doing, walking down a country road late at night alone. She was looking for trouble, even if she wasn’t. She was young, defiant, reckless. Neuroscientists say it takes 20 years for the brain to develop to full capacity, for the soft skull to expand to make room for the brain, whereupon it hardens to protect the brain. That’s why adulthood in many countries begins at 20. In my home state of California it sensibly begins at 21. I remember how reckless and immature I was as a teenager. I thought I knew everything, which of course meant I knew nothing.
Death means full stop. Finality. The end of everything. No more time, hopes, dreams. No more new sunrise tomorrow. In one moment things are as they are, everything you know; in the next, oblivion, nothing. The living take the brunt of it all: the shock, confusion, pain, loss. They have to go on living through their own forms of oblivion — through drugs, alcohol, breakdown, religion.
Mildred’s peace will come, she thinks, when justice is done. It’s a workable theory and makes sense on the surface. But life is more complex than the theories that explain it. Other things are busy below the surface. Where does peace and acceptance come from? From billboards? From law courts? From police reports? The film asks because it wants to know, suggesting that surface can’t be enough.
The best films are often emotional journeys, explorations of personal revelation and evolution. In this one we mainly ride with Mildred. But there are others who suffer too. One is the chief of police in Ebbing, Bill Willoughby. He headed up the investigation into the rape and murder of Angela. He’s dying now too and knows it. He has pancreatic cancer, a virulent killer. How much longer to live? Months, not years. Another is Jason Dixon, a young, not very bright or likeable Ebbing police officer. Nobody loves him apart from his overprotective elderly mother. They live alone together. Dixon never found his fancy woman, never married. He’s a sad sack who hates being one. So he takes out his frustration on others because he can, his aggression protected by a police badge and the whiteness of his skin in a racist town, state, country. Detention rooms are what he likes most. In them he has the freedom to bully those whom he dislikes, disdains, envies, etc. How can this man invite even an ounce of our sympathy? Initially he can’t. But he also evolves through time. Like all of us, he’s not immune to suffering. Experience will teach him valuable things.
One potent emotion at the heart of things is love. It wears many faces and may often be hard to find, but it exists. Like energy, it can’t be destroyed, only transformed. The First Law of Thermodynamics says so, at least about energy. So that’s another interesting thing in the film. It understands and explores the transformational power of love, eschewing simplistic caricatures of it in favour of something deeper, something more mature and meaningful.
In every area of expertise the film is a triumph: writing, acting, directing, editing, cinematography, music. The three standout leads are phenomenal: Frances McDormand as Mildred, Woody Harrelson as Willoughby, and Sam Rockwell as Dixon. The supporting cast is brilliant too. The film rightly won many awards at film festivals around the world, proof that cinema still exists as an art form in an age of ADD and smartphone dysfunction addiction.
The police have done what they can in Ebbing, a small berg in Missouri in the American heartland. All leads have come to dead-ends. None of the DNA has matched up. The killer, whoever he was, is at large. Seven months have passed since the crime was committed, seven agonising months that feel like a lifetime. Time heals all wounds, the cliché says, but Mildred isn’t buying it. Wounds fester and worsen through time. Time deepens loss and pain.
The old highway outside town is abandoned now. The new freeway built a few years ago put paid to it. Nobody saunters down the highway anymore. Weeds grow tall along its verges. Three dilapidated wooden billboards still stand in a field along the highway. They once advertised things sellers wanted to sell. The messages were large, in your face, impossible to ignore as you drove past. But that was then when then was the 1980s. The world has moved on since and sales are now made in other ways, even via one clicks with a mouse. But the billboards remain, or just barely, so neglected and unimportant now that no one has bothered to chainsaw or burn them down.
One day Mildred is in her station wagon on the old highway. The billboards (three in succession) have caught her eye and she begins to slow down, finally coming to a halt on the highway. The car isn’t moving but the wheels in her head are. We watch them turn, see Mildred think. She has an idea and takes it back with her into town.
She’s upstairs in an office on Main Street in a building just across from the Ebbing Police Station. She talks to Red Welby. The billboards are owned by Red’s company. They’re still on the company books even though they haven’t brought in any revenue since 1986. Mildred is the first since then to want to use them. She isn’t selling anything. Instead she’s a buyer, and what she wants to buy is justice.
She hands Red four things: a stack of cash that totals 5,000 dollars and three slips of paper with questions written on them. Mildred wants answers to the questions, not more dead-ends, delays, police incompetence. She believes the priorities of the cops are all wrong — hassling blacks for the sake or fun of it, busting teens for dope, hauling in town drunks to dry out in jail cells at the station. Life goes on, as they say. They tried to catch Angela’s killer, but resources and manpower are thin. There’s only so much a small force can do. But Mildred won’t tolerate the excuses. She wants results. She’s demanding justice. Until it comes her soul and Angela’s will not rest. She’ll kill the killer herself if she ever gets her hands on him. When conventional justice fails the only two options left are acquiescence, meaning acceptance, or vigilante justice. Mildred Hayes is strong and resolute. She doesn’t do meek acceptance. She’s out for blood and can almost taste it in her mouth.
The last day of Angela’s life was not a good one for Mildred (or Angela). They quarrelled as they often did. Mama Protector tried to protect her wilful, spirited daughter. But Angela was having none of it, sick and tired of being treated like a child instead of an adult, or near-adult, a person with a will of her own. Defiance had become her main stance against her mother’s wishes and commands. They shouted at one another and Angela left the house in a huff. She would stay out late, get drunk, get home however and wherever since Mama wouldn’t lend her the car keys. Same old story, Angela wanting freedom, Mildred acting as warden or parole officer.
Angela thinks she’s an adult and wants to do adult things. But she’s not yet there emotionally. Her view is tinctured by teen fantasies and immaturity. She half understands adulthood, seeing the freedom but not the responsibilities in it. She could get into trouble, maybe has been in trouble before, so Mildred knows all about this.
Where is Angela’s father, a man who might bring some workable discipline to the table? He’s a drunk and wife beater who has run off with a 19-year-old bimbo. They’re shacking up together in Ebbing or some other Missouri town. So it looks like Papa wouldn’t have brought much discipline to the table anyway.
The problems of being a single mum are many. But maybe the biggest is the impossibility of being two parents in one, mother and father. It’s the reason marriage has two adults in it, one male, one female. Or conventionally it does. Such balance seems to work in raising kids, or can if the parenting team works from the same playbook. But being beaten by your drunken husband is not part of the playbook if you’re a woman and mother. Your parenting gets even harder when you’re black and blue and aching.
So Mildred and Angela argued. They fought. Angela said she’d walk home since Mama wouldn’t let her drive. Angela dared her out of spite, reminding Mildred of the danger (as if she didn’t know it already). “I might get raped,” she shouted at Mildred. She didn’t mean it or want it, but she got it. She also got death. One of Mildred’s billboards will read: “Raped while dying”.
That’s the thing. The young woman was alone. She was defenceless. Probably she was tipsy or even dizzy. She didn’t fully know what she was doing, walking down a country road late at night alone. She was looking for trouble, even if she wasn’t. She was young, defiant, reckless. Neuroscientists say it takes 20 years for the brain to develop to full capacity, for the soft skull to expand to make room for the brain, whereupon it hardens to protect the brain. That’s why adulthood in many countries begins at 20. In my home state of California it sensibly begins at 21. I remember how reckless and immature I was as a teenager. I thought I knew everything, which of course meant I knew nothing.
Death means full stop. Finality. The end of everything. No more time, hopes, dreams. No more new sunrise tomorrow. In one moment things are as they are, everything you know; in the next, oblivion, nothing. The living take the brunt of it all: the shock, confusion, pain, loss. They have to go on living through their own forms of oblivion — through drugs, alcohol, breakdown, religion.
Mildred’s peace will come, she thinks, when justice is done. It’s a workable theory and makes sense on the surface. But life is more complex than the theories that explain it. Other things are busy below the surface. Where does peace and acceptance come from? From billboards? From law courts? From police reports? The film asks because it wants to know, suggesting that surface can’t be enough.
The best films are often emotional journeys, explorations of personal revelation and evolution. In this one we mainly ride with Mildred. But there are others who suffer too. One is the chief of police in Ebbing, Bill Willoughby. He headed up the investigation into the rape and murder of Angela. He’s dying now too and knows it. He has pancreatic cancer, a virulent killer. How much longer to live? Months, not years. Another is Jason Dixon, a young, not very bright or likeable Ebbing police officer. Nobody loves him apart from his overprotective elderly mother. They live alone together. Dixon never found his fancy woman, never married. He’s a sad sack who hates being one. So he takes out his frustration on others because he can, his aggression protected by a police badge and the whiteness of his skin in a racist town, state, country. Detention rooms are what he likes most. In them he has the freedom to bully those whom he dislikes, disdains, envies, etc. How can this man invite even an ounce of our sympathy? Initially he can’t. But he also evolves through time. Like all of us, he’s not immune to suffering. Experience will teach him valuable things.
One potent emotion at the heart of things is love. It wears many faces and may often be hard to find, but it exists. Like energy, it can’t be destroyed, only transformed. The First Law of Thermodynamics says so, at least about energy. So that’s another interesting thing in the film. It understands and explores the transformational power of love, eschewing simplistic caricatures of it in favour of something deeper, something more mature and meaningful.
In every area of expertise the film is a triumph: writing, acting, directing, editing, cinematography, music. The three standout leads are phenomenal: Frances McDormand as Mildred, Woody Harrelson as Willoughby, and Sam Rockwell as Dixon. The supporting cast is brilliant too. The film rightly won many awards at film festivals around the world, proof that cinema still exists as an art form in an age of ADD and smartphone dysfunction addiction.
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ZeitGhoul (music is my sanctuary)
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the great newish directors for me. 3 Billboards deserving of acclaim.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 July 2020Verified Purchase
I may have only cried 4 times throughout this movie but I'm still gonna give it the 5 star review treatment this masterpiece deserves. For me this is one of the best Oscar winners I've seen for two reasons.....
Firstly, Francis Mcdermond, one of my all time favourite actresses for that just one performance in Fargo before this, cements that status with an even more stunning performance. She oozes that clever wit but here she is as hard as nails and single minded as any hero I've seen on film. The acting all round is fantastic, the script beautifully savage. The photography brilliant. Dark and touching the actors make this utterly memorable. The character arks are amazingly touching.
The other reason is the directors skill. More refined and noteworthy even than the excellent In Bruges this is obviouly the work of a considerable newish talent. There are 3 great newish directors who's films are really affecting on a cultural level, with a real authority and signature in their work....Boon, Eggers and McDonagh.
Exciting times. A must watch.
Firstly, Francis Mcdermond, one of my all time favourite actresses for that just one performance in Fargo before this, cements that status with an even more stunning performance. She oozes that clever wit but here she is as hard as nails and single minded as any hero I've seen on film. The acting all round is fantastic, the script beautifully savage. The photography brilliant. Dark and touching the actors make this utterly memorable. The character arks are amazingly touching.
The other reason is the directors skill. More refined and noteworthy even than the excellent In Bruges this is obviouly the work of a considerable newish talent. There are 3 great newish directors who's films are really affecting on a cultural level, with a real authority and signature in their work....Boon, Eggers and McDonagh.
Exciting times. A must watch.
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Spot Check
5.0 out of 5 stars
Moving and darkly funny
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 July 2020Verified Purchase
This is a moving and gripping story about a mother's grief and despair that the police may never find her daughter's rapist and killer. This puts her on a collision course with the town's decent and terminally ill Chief of Police and an unhinged officer who works for him. Despite the heart-rending back story and sometimes terrible events that unfold, there are moments of laughter, although the humour is black (but never bleak). It has its share of quirkiness and it's not just the presence of Frances McDormand that will remind you of the classic, Fargo - although the character she plays here couldn't be more different. The cast are all at the top of their game, most particularly the leads: McDormand, Rockwell and Harrelson. Among the supporting cast, Peter Dinklage is the standout performer. So many times I have purchased movies that I watch once and leave alone, but I fully expect to watch this one many times and press it on guests when they come to visit. Warning: there is regular use of strong language throughout the film, including multiple instances of the word considered the foulest in the English language.

UKNorthWestGuy
2.0 out of 5 stars
Mean spirited and unconvincing
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 February 2019Verified Purchase
Horrible movie.
It's clear from the outset that this mean spirited movie intends to put itself forward for an Oscar nomination by cynically exploiting identity politics throughout its script.
Nothing wrong with portraying anger in a movie, but when its done to portray victimisation where gender and race are used as cynically as this - the results are unconvincing and conceited.
The movie comes across as anti-male and pro-identity politics which ultimately distracts from telling any real story and put me off the movie as a whole.
It's a social justice warrior's dream - but for me probably the worst film I've seen for a while. Even the lead actors who are incredibly experienced couldn't save this movie.
It's clear from the outset that this mean spirited movie intends to put itself forward for an Oscar nomination by cynically exploiting identity politics throughout its script.
Nothing wrong with portraying anger in a movie, but when its done to portray victimisation where gender and race are used as cynically as this - the results are unconvincing and conceited.
The movie comes across as anti-male and pro-identity politics which ultimately distracts from telling any real story and put me off the movie as a whole.
It's a social justice warrior's dream - but for me probably the worst film I've seen for a while. Even the lead actors who are incredibly experienced couldn't save this movie.
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