Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is a dark comedy written and directed by Martin McDonagh (Seven Psychopaths). It won the People’s Choice Award at TIFF , where it had its North American premiere. The film stars Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, John Hawkes, and Peter Dinklage.

After months have passed without a culprit in her daughter’s murder case, Mildred Hayes (Academy Award® winner Frances McDormand) makes a bold move, painting three signs leading into her town with a controversial message directed at William Willoughby (Academy Award® nominee Woody Harrelson), the town’s revered chief of police. When his second-in-command Officer Dixon (Sam Rockwell), an immature mother’s boy with a penchant for violence, gets involved, the battle between Mildred and Ebbing’s law enforcement is only exacerbated.

McDormand drew inspiration for her character from a Western legend. “I really latched onto John Wayne in a big way as my physical idea, because I really had no female physical icons to go off of for Mildred,” she explains. “She is more in the tradition of the Spaghetti Western’s mystery man, who comes walking down the center of the street, guns drawn, and blows everybody away — although I think it’s important that the only weapons Mildred ever uses are her wits and a Molotov cocktail.”

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is rated 14A.