There are many ways in which people can deal with grief. For instance, if you are outbid on an eBay auction at the last second, a common reaction is to send a furious, handwritten letter to your internet provider and complain about your shit broadband. Or if you a receive a pizza with the wrong toppings, it is perfectly reasonable to peel off all the cheese and lick the pur\u00e9e off the base like a depressed cat. If your daughter has been brutally murdered, however, you may wish to erect a series of colourful posters to cheer yourself up.<\/p>\n
That is exactly what Frances McDormand does in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, an excellent film that has been described as a \u2018firecracker\u2019 and a \u2018rollercoaster of high-octane, carnival explosiveness\u2019 \u2013 an assortment of words that presumably means something.<\/p>\n
McDormand\u2019s character, Mildred Hayes, has elected to use three billboards outside her hometown to annoy the local police force, who have yet to arrest her daughter\u2019s killer. The first billboard features an image of a cartoon fisherman winking, while suggestively dangling a worm below his belt; the second is a poster for a Melissa McCarthy film called \u201cFalling Over: Chapter 4\u201d; and the last is an advert for a set of reasonably priced drawers from IKEA.<\/p>\n
These billboards particularly perturb the police chief, played by loveable slaphead Woody Harrelson. He knows that if people from within the community catch a glimpse of these posters, they may become aware of the outside world and start demanding larger imports of things like hay. His only option is to increase his efforts to solve the murder case and reassure the people of Ebbing that Melissa McCarthy can\u2019t hurt them.<\/p>\n
It takes a steamroller of a performance from Frances McDormand to really ignite this black snake firework of a film \u2013 or something else a critic might say. She barrels through the streets of her hometown, sleeves rolled up and nutting any cunt who gets in her way.<\/p>\n
As tensions between her and the police rose, my sphincter tightened so much that I was actually elevated several centimetres on my chair, giving me the perfect vantage point to watch her stove in her dentist\u2019s teeth \u2013 a brilliantly crafted piece of irony from director Martin McDonagh.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s not just her performance that\u2019s responsible for all those superlatives on the posters you\u2019ve been forced to look at on the underground. Sam Rockwell, who plays a racist, homophobic cop living with his mum, is also worthy of a golden bloke.<\/p>\n
He starts out as a grasping simpleton with an overt fondness for his baton, but the film then takes his character in some unexpected directions. Rockwell handles the transition with such conviction that it actually earned him a place on the film\u2019s poster at my local train station. It was positioned next to an advert for a chest of MALMO drawers, retailing at \u00a349.99, which I thought was quite reasonable.<\/p>\n