Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

Most people think so. 83% of audiences gave it a thumbs up, by Google's archived audience score. Critics agree, scoring it 89%.

After seven months have passed without a culprit in her daughter's murder case, Mildred Hayes makes a bold move, painting three signs leading into her town with a controversial message directed at Bill Willoughby, the town's revered chief of police. When his second-in-command Officer Jason Dixon, an immature mother's boy with a penchant for violence, gets involved, the battle between Mildred and Ebbing's law enforcement is only exacerbated. Wikipedia ↗

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is a 2017 British-American dark comedy-drama written and directed by Martin McDonagh. Frances McDormand stars as Mildred Hayes, a tough, grief-stricken mother who rents three dilapidated billboards on a rural road outside her small Missouri town to display provocative messages challenging the local police chief, played by Woody Harrelson, for failing to solve her daughter's rape and murder seven months earlier. The billboards ignite a war of escalation involving the sympathetic but dying police chief, a violent, racist deputy played by Sam Rockwell, and a community that turns against Mildred for embarrassing its institutions.

Frances McDormand won the Academy Award for Best Actress for a performance of ferocious intensity — Mildred is not a sympathetic victim but a rage-filled force of nature who firebombs police stations and kicks teenagers. Sam Rockwell won Best Supporting Actor for his complex portrayal of a genuinely terrible person who unexpectedly begins to change, though the film's suggestion that racist violence can be redeemed through personal growth was debated. Martin McDonagh's signature blend of dark humor, shocking violence, and moments of unexpected tenderness gave the film a tonal unpredictability that kept audiences off balance.

Three Billboards earned $159 million worldwide on a $15 million budget and won four major Golden Globe Awards including Best Picture — Drama.