This movie was soooo bad. Unrealistic characters, unrealistic motives, and unrealistic story. The cast was a weak cast to start with, besides Woody. Then they kill him off half way through, instantly making the audience lose interest since he was the only likeable character. You can't even like the grieving mother since her way of dealing with her daughters murder is by committing felony after felony, and being an asshole to people who didn't deserve it. Overall, terrible movie with no glimpse of happiness or realism. DONT WASTE YOUR TIME.

I recommend reading my comments after seeing the movie, but if you never intend to see it, read them now: The script gives its characters words we should not expect them to say, to express insights that should surprise us. The characters follow the path to cinematic fulfillment (the movie leads to a road trip). For all its appearance of social consciousness, Three Billboards is an entertainment. The artful ways the movie delivers platitudes makes the platitudes seem fresh. The characters must be in darkness (since they're from Missouri?) before discovering that they can move into the light. They're supposedly racist and bigoted -- what does that have to do with finding or failing to find a rapist/murderer? Now that I have asked, I offer an answer. The practice of racism and bigotry breaks down its practitioner's will to work overtime, and it reduces the incentive to explore the unknown. Movie vengeance, however, is always worth the extra effort. To demonstrate the degree to which one can work overtime, the fired police officer nearly kills himself to catch the monster criminal. Ultimately, there could be a cover-up to protect the accused, who is a desert marine, in order to demonstrate the degree of bias the police can have in favor of veterans over civilians.But the conjecture is for our own amusement. The piece is a construct, filled with incendiary randomness...cancer, suicide, torture, rape, murder, arson (To quote memorable lines from Bob Dylan, "Abe said, where do you want killing done? God said, Out there on Highway 61" ... by the three billboards.). These unexplained initial acts (How low can humans go?) are what make the movie possible.As with Tarrantino movies (which get more entertaining the older they get) some human automaton out there must be willing to do a horrible act in order to test everyone's reactions.In Mr. McDonagh's move (this one), the lines that resonate currently are spoken in the brick-a-brack shop "Did you do it?" Answer: "No." The unspoken further answer for the audience to add later is, "but I've been doing the same thing in Iraq."Yes, I kept watching. Toward the half-way mark the surprises in cross narratives grabbed my attention and held me to the end. That in itself deserves my acknowledgment of efforts of all involved in creating this piece.There is a Nicholas Roeg reference in this movie, which I see discussed elsewhere in the IMDB comments which I did not believe while watching. In the movie, the movie on TV is "Don't Look Now," Mr. Roeg's Venetian Lost Child Thriller. "Don't Look Now" is scary. It doesn't mount social consciousness issues to create self-satisfying entertainment. (I'm thinking the resurgence of socially conscious entertainment began with the 2004 "Crash."I like that this movie ends with the two major stars on a road trip.

An amazing movie about human nature. I don't know if everyone will understand the complexity, however the way all the characters intertwined was fascinating and touching. I was moved by this movie and I am glad I watched it.

Sorry. This movie has a lot going for it. Excellent acting, sharp dialogues, great music, and nice visuals. It also has an interesting premise and deals with important social issues such as racism, sexism, homophobia, and so on. It is thought provoking and moving, which is why I am wasting my time writing this review - because this movie's plot is so poorly constructed that it makes a random episode of "Elementary" look like a piece of high art. I'm going to spoil the hell out of it. Be warned.First, while I can understand why a mother, mad with grief and blaming herself about the rape and murder of her daughter, would put these billboards up, I can't see the reason she would keep them up. She made the police her enemy. Nobody in Ebbing (this name is really funny in my language, by the way) supported her, except her best friend. Her son was bullied in school because of these billboards. Her son was crying to her that he didn't want them to remind him of his sister's horrifying death every day of his life. Why would she keep wrecking his life, and why would she keep ruining her own life? Plus, sorry, but she was a cashier in a gift shop. This, as far as I'm aware, is not a terribly well paid job. Why would she waste five thousand dollars a month on something that only brings her more grief? She had a living kid to take care of, after all, and one would think that supporting her son would be more important to her than flipping the police off.Then there are the real problems. OK, I know this movie isn't supposed to be realistic, and I know it is not a detective mystery, but, dammit, the writer/director should have approached the copious amount of criminal activity he showed on screen more carefully. Maybe he wanted to show how corrupt and/or inept the policemen in small Southern cities were. I don't know, and, frankly, I don't care - because there is no way in hell that a police officer, while on duty, will single-handedly destroy an advertising agency, beat the living snot out of its owner, and assault his secretary, and get away with it, especially if he does it in front of dozens of witnesses, one of them - his new chief. At the very least, the people he beat would press charges. There is no way that a woman, grieving or not, will go to a school yard and beat a few kids up and get away with it. There is no way that the same woman will burn the police department down and get away with it, especially after the person who has provided her with an alibi yells in a crowded restaurant that she did it. There is no way that a former police officer will confess (in the same restaurant, in the same freaking scene) that he has committed arson and get away with it. And so on. None of these crimes was properly investigated. None of them led to arresting anyone. (And there were more crimes where the result was the same.) Was that supposed to be a part of the message?Then there are the absolutely unrealistic situations, like the flashback where the daughter said she hoped she'd get raped and the mother said she had the same hopes. Or the scene where two men entered a bar, sat less than a foot away from a person they didn't know, and started a casual conversation during which one of them bragged about raping a girl to death. Or the scene where two parents left their little girls unattended by a lake and went to the woods to make love and get drunk. Or the scene where the father, after giving his kids one last happy day, went to the stables and shot himself in the head, because he wanted his kids to remember this happy day. And so on. This movie is filled with forced situations that, thanks to the (admittedly, great) acting, somehow work, but at the moment you start thinking about them, you realize that they are forced, unrealistic, and stupid.All in all, I wanted and expected more. Sorry. (My next review will be more positive, I promise. I need to break this string of negativity.)