Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri | Blisteringly funny satire

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri Frances McDormand

(Image credit: 20th Century Fox)

Darkly satirical, blisteringly funny.

An Oscar-winning Frances McDormand is on incendiary form as a grieving mother seeking justice for her raped and murdered daughter in the darkly satirical, blisteringly funny Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. She’s the one who puts up a series of enraged ads on the billboards of the title in a bid to goad the local police chief (a sardonic Woody Harrelson) into finding her daughter’s killer.

Balancing caustic humour and heartbreaking compassion, writer-director Martin McDonagh ( In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths) takes his film in some unexpected directions and reveals unexpected shades to his characters, too, from McDormand’s ornery heroine to the blundering, bigoted officer played by Sam Rockwell (another Oscar winner). Yes, the title is a mouthful, but the film is terrific.

Certificate 15. Runtime 115 mins. Director Martin McDonagh

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri available on Blu-ray, DVD & Digital from Twentieth Century Fox.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up61Tf6KnNw

A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.