The best sign I ever
saw simply said, “I fucked Jackie Smith on these steps and up the
arse. What a slag”. Well, it wasn't so much of a sign as it was a
bit of graffiti scrawled on a wall in Birkenhead but I think we got
the message. If you ever meet a girl called Jackie Smith then buy her
a drink because apparently she's fucking cool! In
Three
Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri Frances McDormand's grieving
mother has a similar idea on how to spread her message... except rather
than being a scrawled and misogynistic review of some post-bummed
tart, McDormand is fucked off with the local police for failing to solve
the case of her raped and murdered daughter. To quote director Martin
McDonagh's brothers film
Calvary, “That's
certainly a startling opening”. Apparently the French title for
this film translates back into English as The Billboards Of
Wrath which is clearly a better
title than what it ended up being. Not least of all because I keep
accidentally referring to this film as The Three Burials Of
Melquiades Estrada which is a
slightly forgotten Tommy Lee Jones western from about ten years ago.
Not to go on about Martin McDonagh's director brother however but
perhaps another fitting title for this movie might have been his War
On Everyone because in this film
and presumably like Jackie Smith, Frances McDormand's character does
not give a fuck about who she shits on to have her way.
