Review by Aaron Haughton

Besides having one of the longest titles, Martin McDonagh's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is one of the best films of the year. The story is pitch black, yet McDonagh and cast manage to find the humanity in even the most despicable of characters, making the fictional town of Ebbing feel all the more real. The film walks a fine tightrope between tragedy and comedy with flawless ease, jumping between sharp comedy and even sharper calamity and back again, never losing focus on the bigger picture and showing us different shades of our colorful characters along the way.

The film follows Mildred, played by Francis McDormand, in the wake of her daughter's brutal murder, as she rents out 3 billboards on Drinkwater Road to condemn the local police force, led by police chief Willoughby, played by Woody Harrelson, for failing to find the culprit. When Willoughby's second-in-command Officer Dixon (Sam Rockwell), an immature mother’s boy with a penchant for violence, gets involved, the battle between Mildred and Ebbing's law enforcement is only exacerbated.