"Three Billboards" shows off writer-director Martin McDonagh's razor sharp black comedy instincts, well shown in plays like "The Beauty Queen of Lenane", "The Lieutenant of Innishmoor" and "Hangmen" and his previous film "In Bruges", in the story of a mother who protests police inaction over the rape and murder of her daughter by erecting three billboards asking pointed questions of the police chief. It's a very contemporary story of vengeance and public shaming, with Frances McDormand giving her best lead performance since "Fargo" and some fantastic support from Woody Harrelson as the not-entirely-unsympathetic police chief, Sam Rockwell as a somewhat more foolish cop plus Peter Dinklage as a local lawyer and friend to McDormand. It balances carefully the fine points of McDormand's righteous rage and the way that it burns both the just and the unjust alike, with escalations as her actions provoke a series of reactions and tit-for-tat revenges that take things several places you won't expect.
What works most about this is McDormand - sure, her character is bitter and angry, and somewhat justifiably so, but it's a very three-dimensional anger, one that you can see exists at least as much to cover for genuine pain as it does due to genuine rage. And it's not a film that finds easy answers at its core, just feeling its way towards finding a way through a cruel and unjust world. And I'll repeat, it's also astoundingly funny. Definitely recommended.
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