Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

Okay, so I knew that it had been nominated for a tonne of awards. But I’ll be honest the premise – girl gets raped in small town America, Chief goes looking for the culprit – didn’t really appeal to me. It sounded like some old story, some old story that we’ve all seen many times before. However, I decided to give the film a shot. And, actually, it turned out way better than I thought – and I can just see why this was such a strong Oscar contender.

The film centres around – you’ll never in a million years guess – three red billboards being put up outside Ebbing, Missouri. They read as follows: “raped while dying”, “and still no arrests?” and “how come, chief Willoughby?” These said billboards are all the genius of Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand) – a woman struck with grief after the death of her teenage daughter, Angela. Chief Willoughby (our favourite Woody Harrelson) has been assigned the task of finding the culprit. But the man is useless at his job. They’ve already gone months without any success – which is why the billboards are put up by an impatient grieving mother. Hopefully now Mr Slow will get a move on.

But as we, the audience, try and uncover the mystery of who killed Miss Hayes, we discover that Willoughby has a secret of his own – he is going to die. Soon. And yes, he wants to uncover the mystery, sure he does. At the same time, though, he doesn’t want this seemingly unsolvable case to consume his last few weeks alive.

There is a lot more to the story than that. We also get to meet a few more characters. One who particularly stood out for me was Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell). At the beginning of the story he really was detestable. Racist and a rubbish cop. Seeing him made me want to throw my popcorn at the cinema screen in anger. (If I did actually have any popcorn on me, that is.) Nonetheless, as the film went on, we began to sympathise with him. We cried for him. And we realised that this racist rubbish cop might not have been as terrible as we had thought.

Now I don’t want to hand over any more spoilers. I’ve already given away enough. All I can say now is – beware of the tears. Tears are going to be shed – and a lot of them.

Unfortunately the film did not win Best Picture which makes me wonder – How come, Chief Willoughby?