Got big "British guy takes on the Big Problems of America" vibes from this one... with all that that implies. The director should do another film about the 'civil war' of contemporary politics or something. What could go wrong?
Where the Coens’ films tend toward gradually spiraling further and further out of control, McDonagh’s work stresses an ultimate resolution to some kind of order, warped as it might be. The work of Flannery O’Connor, openly referenced in a shot of a character reading A Good Man Is Hard to Find, hangs heavily over the film, wherein the external chaos that ripples outward from Mildred’s actions ultimately resolves itself as an examination of her character and the pitfalls of her implacable stubbornness.
— Jake Cole (Slant Magazine)
After seven months have passed without a culprit in her daughter's murder case, Mildred Hayes makes a bold move, painting three signs leading into her town with a controversial message directed at Bill Willoughby, the town's revered chief of police. When his second-in-command Officer Jason Dixon, an immature mother's boy with a penchant for violence, gets involved, the battle between Mildred and Ebbing's law enforcement is only exacerbated.