Three Billboards Outside Belling, Missouri - Martin McDonagh

From my vantage point, Martin McDonagh's film, "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri," was unexpected. It had popped into the movie theaters around the start of December, without a lot of promotion. Or else I haven't been paying attention as carefully as I should.

Well, it has all eyes on it now, and rightly so.

Seven years after her daughter is raped and murdered, Mildred (Francis McDormand), has lost her patience with the police and their ineffective investigation.

Rather than repeatedly going to the cops, Mildred decides to take matters into her own hands. She takes out advertising space on three billboards which together, spell out, "Raped while dying" "And still no arrests?" "How come, Chief Willoughby?"

To say this causes a stir would be a silly understatement. The entire town comes rushing to defend Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson).

Sadly, in their minds, Mildred turns from a sympathetic mourning mom to a shrew throwing blame on who the towns considers to be a good man.

One the cops under Willoughby's wing, Dixon (Sam Rockwell), takes the situation very personally. To Dixon, Willoughby is the ultimate father figure, cop, and man, and how dare Mildred say anything bad about the man?

Things get ugly very quickly. It starts with just a small tit-for-tat between Mildred and Dixon then whirls up to the exercising of true hatred and then the story explodes.

"Billboards" is a cautionary tale about vengeance. The films demonstrates what can happen when even the most ordinary people allow rage and hatred to burn hotter and hotter.

I do understand why everybody is making such a big deal out of this film. Firstly, the performances by Frances McDonald and Sam Rockwell are a marvel.

And Woody Harrelson excels as he plays the world-weary Chief Willoughby.

As far as the story goes, it's a beautiful, escalating screenplay. In many films structured like this, the acceleration is sloppy and the movie loses its way. But McDonaugh takes us through what someone is capable of in their grief and holds it all together. That's why the film more than the ordinary eye-for-an-eye movies.

"Three Billboards Outside Belling, Missouri" may look like a run of the mill film of  escalating one-upsmanship, but it's so much more than that. The performances are close to perfect. Pair that with an incredibly subtle but intensely emotional screenplay as its foundation, and you have a small masterpiece.

So yes, "Billboards" lives up to the hype. It actually is among the best pictures of the year.