Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Fox Searchlight Pictures | Release Date: November 10, 2017 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
88
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 50 Critic Reviews
Positive:
49
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
EmpireTerri WhiteJan 8, 2018
Funny, brutal and breathtakingly beautiful. Two exceptionally raw lead performances, supercharged by a bold script from Martin McDonagh, could make Three Billboards this year’s Awards-upsetter. Read full review
100
Total FilmJamie GrahamJan 8, 2018
McDormand is an unstoppable force in a fiercely intelligent, profanely poetic movie that shifts tonal gears at breakneck speed. Read full review
100
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliNov 22, 2017
Traverses a high wire between comedy and tragedy and does so without a safety net. Outside the Coen Brothers, it’s hard to find a filmmaker with that skill and with this production, McDonagh has placed himself in august company. Read full review
100
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonNov 22, 2017
Entertaining in a way that’s practically unheard of these days. It’s about the sheer exhilaration of expressing yourself, no matter what anybody thinks. Read full review
100
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottNov 22, 2017
A meticulously shot and sharply written character study, it plays like a blend of the Coen brothers and Quentin Tarantino, borrowing its subtle philosophical core from the former and its sudden bursts of violence and blood-spattering vitriol from the latter. It's also a great film, an entertaining and thoughtful examination of one woman's journey into darkness, as well as a study of the corrosive nature of anger and hate when left unchecked. Read full review
100
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallNov 21, 2017
Three Billboards lands somewhere near Coen brothers country, eloquently finding comedy in horror and vice versa. Yet it remains its own mangy animal; a study in grief that’s funny, finding justice in terror and forgiveness after the unforgivable. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperNov 16, 2017
Following the path of “Three Billboards” is a little like driving down an unfamiliar road in beautiful but forbidding country late at night, and alternately marveling at the scenery and gripping the steering wheel tightly when yet another steep drop or sudden change of direction presents itself. Read full review
100
Movie NationRoger MooreNov 15, 2017
It’s one of the best pictures of the year. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleNov 15, 2017
The movie represents a leap forward for writer-director Martin McDonagh. Three Billboards is as clever and imaginative as McDonagh’s “In Bruges,” in terms of how it makes characters collide in delightful and unexpected ways. Read full review
100
Rolling StonePeter TraversNov 7, 2017
It's a renegade masterpiece that will get you good. Read full review
100
USA TodayBrian TruittNov 7, 2017
Writer/director Martin McDonagh (In Bruges) crafts an expertly structured, brutal, yet surprisingly rousing narrative around a woman who’s ready to torch her entire life if it means catching a killer. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comBrian TallericoSep 13, 2017
Anger is an energy in Martin McDonagh’s brilliant Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, one of the best films of the year. Read full review
100
ScreenCrushMatt SingerSep 12, 2017
It is a movie about how anger consumes and destroys, and how the only cure for that anger is empathy, something that’s in short supply these days but Three Billboards has in abundance. Read full review
100
The Film StageRory O'ConnorSep 11, 2017
McDonagh’s latest work is simply exceptional; a film so rich with narrative fluidity, profane laughs, standout performances and complex character studies that its tremendous emotional hits–often arriving when you least expect them–might just leave you agog. Read full review
100
The TelegraphRobbie CollinSep 9, 2017
It all makes for soaringly satisfying viewing, yet the satisfaction comes from blistering performances and virtuosic screenwriting, and absolutely nothing else. Read full review
100
The GuardianXan BrooksSep 9, 2017
Those familiar with McDonagh’s work will be unsurprised to learn that Three Billboards is a bold and showboating affair, robustly drawn and richly written; a violent carnival of small-town American life. Yet it has a big, beating heart, even a rough-edged compassion for its brawling inhabitants. Read full review
98
The AtlanticChristopher OrrJan 9, 2018
It is a film that continually complicates and recomplicates itself, denying viewers the comfort of easy moral footing. It is by turns heartbreaking, harrowing in its violence, and very, very funny, and it features Oscar-level performances by Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, and Sam Rockwell. Read full review
95
IGNAlex WelchOct 31, 2017
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is Martin McDonagh’s most emotional and profound film to date. Read full review
91
ConsequenceDominick Suzanne-MayerNov 12, 2017
Three Billboards may be a film chiefly concerned with rage, and pain, but it’s also one of the best dark comedies of recent vintage, and one of the better dramas as well. While some of McDonagh’s narrative threads do time out in unexpected and even unresolved ways, the film’s highs are exemplary. Read full review
91
IndieWireBen CrollSep 9, 2017
Not only is Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri the director’s most accomplished film yet, it’s also his most compassionate. Read full review
91
The PlaylistGregory EllwoodSep 9, 2017
What immediately comes to the forefront is that McDonagh has choreographed an almost impossible feat of a brutally dark comedy that, thanks to both Rockwell and McDormand, elicits an emotional response you simply don’t see coming. Read full review
90
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzNov 16, 2017
"Three Billboards" is a really good movie filled with terrific performances, but what McDormand is doing here surpasses them all. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranNov 9, 2017
In the hands of uncommon writer-director Martin McDonagh and a splendid cast toplined by Frances McDormand in what could be the role of her rich and varied career, the how and why of those billboards becomes a savage film, even a dangerous one, the blackest take-no-prisoners farce in quite some time. Read full review
90
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternNov 9, 2017
The movie is, by turns — and sometimes simultaneously — darkly comic, blazingly profane, flat-out hilarious and shockingly violent, not to mention flippant, tender, poetic and profound. Read full review
90
New York Daily NewsJoe DziemianowiczNov 8, 2017
In the end, it's all about McDormand, who’s great at playing ordinary women in extraordinary circumstances. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneySep 9, 2017
While the film continues almost throughout to generate great whoops of shocking laughter, it's the notes of genuine sorrow, compassion and contrition that resonate. Read full review
88
Philadelphia Daily NewsGary ThompsonNov 21, 2017
It’s a remarkable performance by McDormand, matched by Rockwell. Read full review
88
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldNov 16, 2017
McDormand, carrying the movie on blue-denimed shoulders, is a wonder. Every now and then, she lets us see the tiniest crack in Mildred’s anger, through which something flickering shines through. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy BurrNov 15, 2017
The script is pungent and profanely funny while remaining rooted in strong and serious emotions. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Kate TaylorNov 9, 2017
On shifting ground, it is McDormand's fine performance that holds steady here, her wit and her fury eliciting more admiration than pity for the unrelenting Mildred. McDonagh does not always conquer this heartland, but McDormand already owns it. Read full review
88
New York PostSara StewartNov 8, 2017
This rural drama is the best yet from playwright and filmmaker Martin McDonagh (“In Bruges,” “Seven Psychopaths”), and one of Frances McDormand’s greatest performances. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineJake ColeSep 13, 2017
The film is the finest balance yet of Martin McDonagh's bleak sense of humor and offbeat moral sincerity. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Sep 11, 2017
Landing closer to Coens country, Three Billboards is more of a slow-roasting tragicomedy about grief and culpability, with higher stakes, a lower gag count, and emphasis on the tragic. But McDonagh still lives for detours and digressions, for the opportunity to stall the plot and humorously slow play a conversation. Read full review
82
Paste MagazineTim GriersonNov 8, 2017
This is a film that’s proudly impertinent but also deeply morally serious. And even if Three Billboards doesn’t always hold together, that’s appropriate for its anxious characters who are, themselves, a little unsteady. Read full review
80
SlateDana StevensNov 9, 2017
Though Mildred makes many choices that are reprehensible or downright dangerous, McDormand never fails to convince us of the fundamental decency of this woman, a tragic heroine struggling to find even the tiniest scrap of meaning in a comically awful world. Read full review
80
The New YorkerAnthony LaneNov 6, 2017
Not since "Fargo" (1996) has [McDormand] found a character of such fibre. She doesn't pitch it to us, still less try to make it palatable; she seems to state Mildred, presenting her as a given fact, like someone unrolling a map. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinNov 6, 2017
I confess that I had a hard time reconciling McDonagh’s madcap incongruities with the horror of the original crime and the grief of a mother struggling to cope with so primal an injury. Are the people who love the movie less rigid in their tastes? Or has McDonagh succeeded in so thoroughly psyching them out that they’re afraid to call foul? Read full review
80
VoxAlissa WilkinsonSep 22, 2017
Every performance in this movie acknowledges that while tragedy is what prompted the film’s events, its contours, characters, and conversations are pure, inky black comedy. Absurdity makes for good humor, and the screwed-up world in which these characters live is nothing if not absurd. Read full review
80
VarietyOwen GleibermanSep 9, 2017
It’s far from a masterpiece, yet it holds you, it adds up, and it’s something to see. Read full review
80
Time Out LondonDave CalhounSep 9, 2017
It’s full of sharp dialogue and entertaining characters and fuelled by a wryly enlightened view of our world and how it can be at once cruel and caring. For a story built on such dark foundations, it’s weirdly reassuring. It’s also enormous fun. Read full review
80
CineVueJohn BleasdaleSep 9, 2017
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is a multi-layered piece with such swathes of great dialogue that it will no doubt reward - if not demand - multiple viewings. It's also another item of evidence pointing toward a filmmaker getting into his stride. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenNov 15, 2017
However commanding and absorbing Three Billboards may be, the film is diminished by its neatness and unconvincing resolutions to the many dilemmas it puts into play. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsNov 16, 2017
For a while it’s engaging but pretty thin. Then it gets more interesting, especially for the actors. Read full review
75
Washington PostAnn HornadayNov 15, 2017
His (Martin McDonagh) movie fuses naturalism and hysterically pitched theatricality with sometimes uneasy, but bracing results. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattNov 9, 2017
A tar-black comedy so caustic it nearly burns a hole in the screen, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri banks a lot on the gale force of Frances McDormand, and nearly pulls it off. Read full review
70
The New York TimesManohla DargisNov 8, 2017
Everything fits together too neatly in “Three Billboards,” even when chaos descends, but the performers add enough rough texture so that it doesn’t always feel so worked. Read full review
70
Screen DailyFionnuala HalliganSep 9, 2017
Anchored by a funny, foul-mouthed performance from McDormand, McDonagh’s daringly-structured dark comedy is rich and layered and often laugh-out-loud funny but trips over constant tonal shifts. Read full review
67
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerNov 10, 2017
McDormand is a bit too spartan and sealed off in the role. Her steeliness doesn’t have enough emotional levels. Read full review
63
ObserverRex ReedNov 17, 2017
A mixed bag of dumb jokes and unspeakable violence that is a big improvement over his (McDonagh) other work (it towers over Seven Psychopaths, which was one of the worst movies ever made) but not good enough to write home about at today’s inflated postal rates. Read full review
60
Village VoiceApril WolfeNov 8, 2017
McDormand could have carried this film all the way through a minefield of touchy topics, singed but with all parts in the right place, primed for a painful laugh. But goddamnit if the cops in this story didn’t ruin all the fun. Read full review
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