Pretty Good

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

OK, let me start by saying this was a good movie. The only thing I didn't like was the ending I really wanted to know how the trip was going end. I know that was the point of the ending it had but dang I wanted to know what was going to happen next! From the beginning to the end it keeps pulling you in to the story of who done it with a lot of good and not overly done comic relief to keep you interested. You want to know who the killer is so bad which is why I highly recommend this movie as a must see.

Beautifully filmed, but the plot is a joke. The poor woman and the black cop against the racist American town with the corrupt bigoted cops. I'm not American, this ideology based style just looks silly. Fake profundity targeting the leftist audience.

I don't get why this movie has gotten so much praise, yeah, it's OK, but slow with a very boring plot. Only the acting can keep your interest for nearly 2 hours. This was more like a hallmark TV movie. Basically, Mildred, decides to put up billboards criticizing the work done by the police in her daughter's murder. In a flash back, we see she carries a lot of guilt because of the last conversation she had with her daughter, but that part is never expanded upon. So of course, people in town get on her back, because the sheriff, Willoughby, is well liked and dying of cancer. She gets a lot of threats and her son gets picked on, but she won't take down the billboards. One side plot which I didn't get why it was thrown in, was Willoughby gives his family a special day, then kills himself. I don't get why that was thrown in. Also, Dixon, one of the "bad" officers but depicted with a heart of gold at the end, beats up the advertising guy, and doesn't go to jail. Instead, he nearly dies at the police station when Mildred sets it on fire. Only to team up with her at the end for vigilante justice. So out of character. So she just leaves her only child left to go hunt someone down; you'd think her son would be her number one priority. It was like just a mesh-pot of story lines thrown in to make a nearly 2 hour run time.FINAL VERDICT: Just don't go in expecting some kind of murder mystery or action packed. Just regular people doing some dirty things to others because they think they have the right to revenge instead of dealing with their problems and grief.

Sorry. This movie has a lot going for it. Excellent acting, sharp dialogues, great music, and nice visuals. It also has an interesting premise and deals with important social issues such as racism, sexism, homophobia, and so on. It is thought provoking and moving, which is why I am wasting my time writing this review - because this movie's plot is so poorly constructed that it makes a random episode of "Elementary" look like a piece of high art. I'm going to spoil the hell out of it. Be warned.First, while I can understand why a mother, mad with grief and blaming herself about the rape and murder of her daughter, would put these billboards up, I can't see the reason she would keep them up. She made the police her enemy. Nobody in Ebbing (this name is really funny in my language, by the way) supported her, except her best friend. Her son was bullied in school because of these billboards. Her son was crying to her that he didn't want them to remind him of his sister's horrifying death every day of his life. Why would she keep wrecking his life, and why would she keep ruining her own life? Plus, sorry, but she was a cashier in a gift shop. This, as far as I'm aware, is not a terribly well paid job. Why would she waste five thousand dollars a month on something that only brings her more grief? She had a living kid to take care of, after all, and one would think that supporting her son would be more important to her than flipping the police off.Then there are the real problems. OK, I know this movie isn't supposed to be realistic, and I know it is not a detective mystery, but, dammit, the writer/director should have approached the copious amount of criminal activity he showed on screen more carefully. Maybe he wanted to show how corrupt and/or inept the policemen in small Southern cities were. I don't know, and, frankly, I don't care - because there is no way in hell that a police officer, while on duty, will single-handedly destroy an advertising agency, beat the living snot out of its owner, and assault his secretary, and get away with it, especially if he does it in front of dozens of witnesses, one of them - his new chief. At the very least, the people he beat would press charges. There is no way that a woman, grieving or not, will go to a school yard and beat a few kids up and get away with it. There is no way that the same woman will burn the police department down and get away with it, especially after the person who has provided her with an alibi yells in a crowded restaurant that she did it. There is no way that a former police officer will confess (in the same restaurant, in the same freaking scene) that he has committed arson and get away with it. And so on. None of these crimes was properly investigated. None of them led to arresting anyone. (And there were more crimes where the result was the same.) Was that supposed to be a part of the message?Then there are the absolutely unrealistic situations, like the flashback where the daughter said she hoped she'd get raped and the mother said she had the same hopes. Or the scene where two men entered a bar, sat less than a foot away from a person they didn't know, and started a casual conversation during which one of them bragged about raping a girl to death. Or the scene where two parents left their little girls unattended by a lake and went to the woods to make love and get drunk. Or the scene where the father, after giving his kids one last happy day, went to the stables and shot himself in the head, because he wanted his kids to remember this happy day. And so on. This movie is filled with forced situations that, thanks to the (admittedly, great) acting, somehow work, but at the moment you start thinking about them, you realize that they are forced, unrealistic, and stupid.All in all, I wanted and expected more. Sorry. (My next review will be more positive, I promise. I need to break this string of negativity.)