Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, some complicated racial politics notwithstanding, is a clever, gripping film that you do not want to miss.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is eventually a film about the need to point fingers. Mildred Hayes is out there hunting for arrests, hunting for someone to blame for an unthinkable, unjustifiable tragedy. At one point in the film, a character – unexpectedly – uses the word ‘begets’ correctly, as in “violence begets violence,” and that momentary lapse of stupidity is enough to protect her from wrath. The difference lies all in an instant. We can put up the labels on giant billboards – Good, Bad, Ugly, Guilty – but we only ever make our minds up as we drive past them, deciding along the way. This film is about reading between the signs.

What didn’t work for me was the open-ended finale. It is both unsettling and distancing and feels like a cop-out. Still this film must be seen. If only to witness the towering talent of McDormand who is almost guaranteed to pick up the Best Actress Oscar in March.

…there is no doubt that in putting a greying, foul-mouthed woman, in shapeless overalls and bandanas, in frazzled hair and cutting no slack, at the heart of this story of sort-of revenge, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, has given McDormand the definitive words of this gone year: “This time, the chick ain’t losing.”

Like his previous movies, Three Billboards strives for such a microscopic sweet spot tonally that the fact that it not only finds it, but sustains it for two hours, is miraculous. It not only aspires towards greatness, but confronts it, screams at it, and when it has everyone’s attention, revels in it. It’s a profane and profound masterpiece that will evolve into a time capsule of sorts, when things get better. Bring your children.

We’re presented with characters and their genuine emotions, as the movie goes through a roller-coaster of heartfelt emotions.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’s insistence to tidy up the mess through coincidences and contrivances, force an almost overnight change of heart and absolve a vitriolic creature with sure enough history of racial violence is not only unconvincing but defeats all its justice-seeking ideals.

If, unlike me, you can set these ethical differences aside, the McDormand steamroller is one hell of an engaging viewing.

‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’ poses an intriguing moral dilemma – can revenge be as bad as the crime itself? It also looks at how tragedy can affect different people, but its biggest achievement is in testing your perspective of how quickly we tend to judge people without knowing what truly drives them. One of the movies that could easily fly under the radar if it wasn’t receiving all the awards buzz, ‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’ is an unassuming film that surprises you with its provocative subject matter and evocative performances that are hard to forget.

Directed by Martin McDonagh, the movie has been bagging all the awards this season for the screenplay; Best Supporting Actor for Sam Rockwell; and Best Actress for Frances McDormand. When you watch the movie, it leaves you with no doubt that all these accolades are well deserved.

Carter Burwell’s measured background score and Ben Davis’ involving cinematography will keep you affected throughout. This is one helluva film. You can’t afford to miss it!

The final scene of the film is not what you expect in a thriller, but that’s the beauty of watching an unconventional film like this – you get to marinate the film inside your mind, mull it over, decide along the way home if what just happened was just an abrupt open ending or logically (and socially) the perfect method to tie it up all together.

We’re lucky to have this film release in theaters, whether you’re a film geek or not you should be booking your tickets right about now.

Deftly written and directed with a keen understanding of the clannish conspiracies that tie the people of small towns together, this film offers us a deep and penetrating view into the innermost enclaves of the human heart where unknown to us, the most unexpected secretion of humanism merges with the cruelest of blows dealt by destiny.