By Justin Taylor

Director Martin Mcdonagh’s third feature, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri,” is the story of a hardened woman who puts up three billboards on a lonely stretch of country road, antagonizing the local police chief for failing to solve the rape and murder of her daughter.

The main protagonist is Mildred Hayes, whose forward and brutally honest opinion alienates her from the rest of the town.

This sort of tonal oddity in the hands of another director might have upset the overall quality of the film, but in the hands of McDonagh, whose previous films, “In Bruges” and “Seven Psychopaths,” have used strikingly similar tones, the dialogue and character moments work excellently, as they are played both seriously and for laughs, only falling flat.

McDonagh films all exist in a very disheartening and pessimistic world, where the characters don’t get what they want and where they have to deal with the consequences of their actions.

The thing that may elevate this film the most is the wide range of performances. Whether it be the refreshingly bitter Frances McDormand in the lead, Woody Harrelson as a dying police chief with a bizarre sense of humor or Sam Rockwell as a racist (but ultimately just naive and ignorant) deputy, everyone is putting in their A game in a cast that has a remarkable amount of chemistry for a group of characters who are almost always at odds.

Cynical, yet surprisingly funny, “Three Billboards” was an oddball of a drama that kept me engaged through its strong use of hard-headed and belligerent characters. Though the story gets derailed at certain points, it is an enjoyable and memorable tale of loss and revenge from a master of cynicism.

Rating: A-