Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

A mother personally challenges the local authorities to solve her daughter's murder when they fail to catch the culprit.

Director:

Martin McDonagh

Writer:

Martin McDonagh

Stars:

Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell

Top Rated Movies #151 | Won 2 Oscars. Another 130 wins & 226 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Frances McDormand	...	Mildred
Caleb Landry Jones	...	Red Welby
Kerry Condon	...	Pamela
Sam Rockwell	...	Dixon
Alejandro Barrios	...	Latino
Jason Ledford	...	Latino #2
Darrell Britt-Gibson	...	Jerome
Woody Harrelson	...	Willoughby
Abbie Cornish	...	Anne
Riya May Atwood	...	Polly
Selah Atwood	...	Jane
Lucas Hedges	...	Robbie
Zeljko Ivanek	...	Desk Sergeant
Amanda Warren	...	Denise
Malaya Rivera Drew	...	Gabriella

Storyline

THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI is a darkly comic drama from Academy Award nominee Martin McDonagh (In Bruges). After months have passed without a culprit in her daughter's murder case, Mildred Hayes (Academy Award winner Frances McDormand) makes a bold move, painting three signs leading into her town with a controversial message directed at William Willoughby (Academy Award nominee Woody Harrelson), the town's revered chief of police. When his second-in-command Officer Dixon (Academy Award winner 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.

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Plot Keywords:

billboard | police brutality | black comedy | ambiguous ending | thrown through a window | 

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Genres:

Comedy | Crime | Drama

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for violence, language throughout, and some sexual references

Did You Know?

Trivia

Included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Schneider.

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Goofs

Contrary to popular belief, the police stations in small towns are not open 24/7. Dispatch operations and jails are often handled by the county sheriff, with the police station open to the public only during business days and hours. Any officers on duty after business hours are usually only in the station at the start and end of their shifts, or when they have to take care of paperwork.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Mildred Hayes: [walking into his office] You Red Welby?
Red Welby: Yes, ma'am. How may I help you?
Mildred Hayes: I heard there's three billboards out on Drinkwater Road. You're in charge of renting them out, that right?
Red Welby: I didn't know we had any billboards out on Drinkwater. Where is Drinkwater Road?
Mildred Hayes: It's a road out past the Sizemore turn-off. Nobody uses it since the freeway got put in.
Red Welby: You are right. Got three billboards out there. Nobody's put nothing up out there since 1986. That was 'Huggies'.
Mildred Hayes: How much to rent out all three...
[...]

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Connections

Featured in Renegade Cut: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri: How (Not) to Discuss Racism in Film (2018)

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Soundtracks

Andante (Piano Sonata No.1 in C, K.279)
Written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Performed by Maria João Pires
Courtesy of Deutsche Grammophon GmbH
Under license from Universal Music Operations Ltd.

User Reviews

Anger, what it begets, and what to do about it

When you think about great cinema, you often imagine some grandiose epic setting which all that greatness builds upon. The likes of Gone With the Wind or Godfather or The Shawshank Redemption, such films span through decades or cover the major historic events.

But a great story isn't necessary grand on the outside. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is like a tiny rabbit hole size of those three wooden screens, but stick a head in - and you'll see a huge empty space laid with people's sorrow, guilt and regret. And that emptiness sucks you in and leaves no way to stay untouched.

But there's also hope. Hope for justice. Hope for retribution. And maybe even hope that it's still not too late to change something, or to change yourself. That nothing is absolutely black and white. That even in the darkest moments of our lives there's some room for a sense of humor, maybe a sad and bitter one but still one worth a warm smile.

This world is a crooked place, where crime often goes unpunished. And Peter Dinklage's small role in this film, as a reference to another not so pretty world where the "happily ever after" way doesn't quite exist, is a stinging reminder of that. TBOEM does not, however, try to pull the magic sword out of the stone and go crush the wicked and protect the righteous. Instead, it shows that sometimes, crumbling under the weight of the evil things that fall on us, we lose our own limits and become those who sow evil ourselves. Anger does beget even more anger.

And maybe the reason that makes America great indeed is that, with all the messed up stuff happening without and within, it's in your culture to value forgiveness, something Christianity teaches everyone but not everyone tends to listen. To suffer without guilt, yet to offer a helping hand to your offender when he's down and wounded. To break the circle of evil and help each other wake that yearning for decency that everyone has inside them, albeit dormant sometimes. Forgiveness is tough, and, just like revenge, it doesn't bring back the things - or people - we've lost. But at least it helps to hold onto what could still be here.

Yeah, it's just a movie, and most people aren't as deep and philosophical as the movie characters can afford to be. But if some unrealistic complexity (and sometimes even wisdom) of the simple people could make some real regular people on the other side of the screen stop and think over their own real regular ways, maybe that's exactly what we need from time to time. Because life is still here, and so are the multiple choices it gives, And which road to choose today, we can still decide along the way.

Details

Official Sites:

Official Facebook Official Site

Country:

UK USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

1 December 2017 (USA)

Also Known As:

Three Billboards

Filming Locations:

Asheville, North Carolina, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$15,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$322,168, 12 November 2017

Gross USA:

$54,513,740

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$160,192,031

Company Credits

Production Co:

Blueprint Pictures, Film 4, Fox Searchlight Pictures

Technical Specs

Runtime:

115 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1