Box office
The film grossed $54.5 million in the United States and Canada, and $105.7 million in other countries, for a worldwide box office total of $160.2 million.[6]
In its limited opening weekend, the film made $322,168 from four theaters, for a per-theater average of $80,542, the fourth-best of 2017.[26] It made $1.1 million from 53 theaters its second weekend and $4.4 million from 614 its third, finishing 9th and 10th at the box office, respectively.[27]
The weekend following its four Golden Globe wins on January 7, 2018, the film was added to 712 theaters (for a total of 1,022) and grossed $2.3 million, an increase of 226% from the previous weekend's $706,188.[28] Two weeks later, following the announcement of the film's seven Oscar nominations, it made $3.6 million, an increase of 87% over the previous week's $1.9 million, finishing 13th at the American box office.[29] The weekend of March 9–11, following its two Oscar wins on March 4, the film made $705,000, down 45% from the previous weekend's $1.3 million.[30]
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 90% of 414 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.4/10. The website's consensus reads: "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri deftly balances black comedy against searing drama – and draws unforgettable performances from its veteran cast along the way."[31] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 88 out of 100, based on 50 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[32]
Owen Gleiberman of Variety praised the film's performances, stating that "It's Mildred's glowering refusal to back down that defines her, and McDormand brilliantly spotlights the conflicted humanity beneath the stony façade", and calling Rockwell's performance a "revelation."[33] Steve Pond, writing for TheWrap, praised McDonagh's writing, calling it "very funny, very violent and surprisingly moving."[34]
Less flatteringly, The New York Times columnist Wesley Morris likened McDonagh's portrayal of rural America to "a set of postcards from a Martian lured to America by a cable news ticker and by rumors of how easily flattered and provoked we are."[35] Manohla Dargis, also writing for The New York Times, said in her review: "[McDonagh's] jokes can be uninterestingly glib with tiny, bloodless pricks that are less about challenging the audience than about obscuring the material's clichés and overriding theatricality."[36] In The New Yorker, Tim Parks praised the film's "magnificently photographed images", but wrote that the plot contained "a thousand cheap coincidences",[37] and concluded that the film is "empty of emotional intelligence" and "devoid of any remotely honest observation of the society it purports to serve."[37]
Some took issue with its handling of racial themes, particularly surrounding the redemptive arc of Officer Dixon, whose alleged torturing of an African American prisoner before the events of the film is referred to several times. In The Daily Beast, blogger Ira Madison III described the treatment of Rockwell's character as "altogether offensive [...] McDonagh's attempts to script the black experience in America are often fumbling and backward and full of outdated tropes."[38] Alyssa Rosenberg noted in The Washington Post that "[Dixon's] redemption doesn't merely defang his previous venomous bigotry; it softens Mildred's character development."[39]
Focusing on the film's treatment of sexual violence, Oliver Kenny pointed out that the film is unusual for not foregrounding images of the rape victim, and welcomed the shift from a focus on the rape itself to how the community handles rape, however poorly or mishandled their approach may be. In this case, the flawed and problematic nature of all the characters (who are each bigoted, racist, judgemental, selfish, and thoughtless in their own ways) is actually one of the film's strong points: "We must therefore think about Three Billboards in the context of rape imagery. Not just as a film that considers discourses around rape but one that does so without depicting the rape itself, without pursuing eye-for-an-eye revenge narratives as a crowd-pleasing solution and without pandering to a black-and-white narrative of evil-doing perpetrators, angelic victims and innocent bystanders. It is a film that entwines everyone in its narrative: the local residents, the police, the news reporters as well as us, the spectator, as we are swung back and forth between the competing ethical interests of all the characters, each of whom is worthy and flawed, invoking empathy and open to negative judgment."[40]
Accolades
At the 75th Golden Globe Awards, Three Billboards won Best Motion Picture – Drama, Best Actress – Drama (McDormand), Best Supporting Actor (Rockwell), and Best Screenplay, and it was also nominated for Best Director and Best Original Score.[41] The film was nominated in nine categories at the 71st British Academy Film Awards[42][43] and won five awards: both Best Film and Outstanding British Film (making it and The King's Speech (2010) the only films to win both awards since the latter category was reintroduced in 1992),[44] Best Leading Actress (McDormand), Best Supporting Actor (Rockwell), and Best Screenplay (Original).[45] At the 24th Screen Actors Guild Awards, the film was nominated for four awards and won three, including Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. It was nominated for six awards at the 23rd Critics' Choice Awards and won three, including Best Acting Ensemble. At the 90th Academy Awards, the film received seven nominations, including for Best Picture, Best Actress (McDormand), Best Supporting Actor (both Rockwell and Harrelson), and Best Original Screenplay, and McDormand and Rockwell took home their respective awards.[46]
The film was named one of the top 10 films of the year by the American Film Institute.[47] It won the top prize, the People's Choice Award, at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival,[48] and won the Audience Award at the 2017 San Sebastián International Film Festival.[21]
