The film "Three Billboards in Ebbing, Missouri, is one of the nine films nominated for an Academy Award. It's about a bunch of gritty, miserable, foulmouthed, grotesque, hurting people. (I wrote a review on January 13, 2018 titled Three Billboards.)
In one of the first scenes, when the lead character goes to an office to rent the three billboards, the young man who helps her is reading "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor. (I wrote a review about this story on October 21, 2017 titled "A Good Man is Hard to Find.")
So when I saw what the man was reading I thought, "Humm!"
But the O'Conner story was never referred to in the film. However they both contain the same kind of reprehensible, messed up characters who seemingly have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. And, to me, the point of both of them was receiving God's unmerited grace.
I did some research and found that a handful of reviewers have seen a connection. Flannery O'Conner was a devout Catholic who wrote about really, really flawed people. To me grace came at the end of "A Good Man is Hard to Find" when grandma is about to be killed by the Misfit and his two henchmen. Grandma is a narcissistic, hateful old woman but at the very end she catches a glimpse of who she and the Misfit really are.
In the "Three Billboards" film, grace is found in the unlikely words of the sheriff.
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