Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand) is frustrated by the lack of police progress in tracking down the man who raped and killed her daughter.  Her idea of chivying them up is to rent three billboards outside of town, plastering them with a very simple question aimed at Police Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson).  They're on a quiet road, but the idea is unusual enough to interest the local TV station, meaning the town, and police, can't ignore the message.

Willoughby tries to talk her out of her action, explaining the difficulties of the case.  One of his subordinates, Officer Dixon (Sam Rockwell), want to take more direct action, with consequences that can only make the situation worse.  Meanwhile Mildred's son Robbie (Lucas Hedges) finds his mum's actions getting some unwelcome attention in school, but can't divert his mother from her chosen path.

What looks like being a battle of wills between Mildred and Willoughby becomes something more complex when a surprise development changes the dynamic of the plot.  From all this emerges a gripping portrait of ordinary lives with all their contradictions and confusions.  It's about change and the ripples it sends through lives, and how grief and anger and fear can drive people to actions that may appear illogical to outsiders, but have their own internal logic.  That the source of our problems isn't always as obvious as it seems, and that if we can't have the ending we wanted then maybe we need to create our own.

There are a couple of far fetched coincidences, and one unlikely epiphany, but most of the time the story and characters feel very real, like people we know, and a reflection of our own inadequacies.  And, reassuringly, it ends with thought provoking ambiguity.

In an excellent cast McDormand is a solid and ambivalent centrepiece, sometimes doing the wrong things for the right reasons and keeping the cap on a geyser of emotion.  It's a film that makes you ponder how you would react in the circumstances, and what more can you ask for?  Well worth seeing.