The murdered body of Melquiades Estrada is buried in a hurry because the shooting and the politics are too complicated to stand trial near the Mexican border. Best friend of Estrada, Pete Perkins (Tommy Lee Jones) realizes that no further investigation of the murder will ensue, so he takes justice into his own hands by kidnapping the border patrolman who took Estrada's life and forces him at gunpoint to disinter Melquiades from his grave and transport him to home soil in Mexico for a proper burial. Unbeknownst to the patrolman (Barry Pepper of Saving Private Ryan), this road trip to the cemetery will be hot, dusty, and grueling as Pete flirts with madness and his own reconciliation.Tough, sporadically funny, and definitely grisly, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is a successful modern-day western. You have your whiskery hero with a cowboy hat who lives by his own code, several bonding moments between stubborn men, retribution for the coward character, and the lesson that maybe vengeance isn't always the best solution. Add a few flashbacks, and, of course, a woman to complicate things, and you are all set.It just so happens that this is also a directorial debut for Tommy Lee Jones, who captures the western beautifully with the help of some radiant cinematography by Chris Menges of The Mission and a cunning script by Mexican writer Guillermo Arriaga of 21Grams and Amores Perros. Film buffs will catch glimpses of the same grittiness seen in Sam Peckinpah's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and similar morality lessons seen John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. True, Jones's film may not be an original, but it does play as a homage to the memorable classics. I believe this was one of the best films of 2005, but I am also reluctant to recommend the film because the western genre is so frowned upon these days with such an upsweep of reality T.V. and short attention spans. My suggestion is to watch this movie simply for the sake of Tommy Lee Jones's extraordinary performance. Or, see it because it contains one of the best lines at the end of a film. Or, see it because it was one of the most overlooked gems of last year, and you will be so grateful for being one of the few to have experienced it!

This movie was pretty disappointing on every level. I love a good western, a good mystery and/or an interesting exploration of moral questions, but this movie was none of those things. Lots could be said about the film's stereotypes, its plodding pace, its rambling storyline, and other flaws.My #1 criticism, though, is that I couldn't understand a word Tommy Lee Jones said (or mumbled). He won Best Actor at Cannes, but I think he should have made the Guinness Book of World Records for Most Gruff Gruffness. I kept wishing that the subtitles they used for Spanish dialogue in this film would keep running when he was speaking.I'm not angry and don't entirely regret watching it, but I would not recommend it to a friend.

Writter Guillermo Arriaga in his writings believes in the strange power that accidents has in everybody's lives and how they connect different countries, different languages and different people in one common cause. He did that with the accidents in "Amores Perros" and in "21 Grams" and with the accidental shooting of a tourist that connected several characters all around the world in "Babel". And all these scripts have in common a non-linear way to present its story, mixing past, future and present in a puzzling way that invites us to guess what will happen next and how come such strange connections are made. "Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" goes just like the trilogy directed by A.G.Iñarritú but it is directed by Tommy Lee Jones and it's more simplistic than the other films (at least in the way the story is presented, less confusing so to speak). The other thing in common is that all of these films are brilliantly well-made, well acted and with many great things to say.Jones stars as Pete, a rancher who wants to find out who killed his best friend, the Mexican Melquiades Estrada (Julio Cedillo), and to fulfill his friend wishes, he needs to bury Melquiades on the other side of the border, in a place called Jimenez. Patrol border Mike (Barry Pepper) is the man who accidentally shot Melquiades, carrying a repressed guilt over the fact, hiding it from his wife (January Jones). Pete and Mike will cross each other when Pete decides that the other guy must help him with the body of the deceased, carrying him to the desert where he'll finally be buried in peace (and one of the three burials of the title). "Three Burials..." offers a story about redemption, love, friendship, cultural clashes; fooling us with a new western style on a tale that might approach themes of revenge and hostilities between Americans and Mexicans. It shows that friendships has no borders, is limitless; and it also shows the power of persistence on a mission that seems to be bizarre and too risky. Pete and Mike will carry the decomposing body of Melquiades in a haunting and dangerous place in the middle of the desert, cross between Texas and Mexico, chased by the police and fighting lots of adversities and meeting a friendly blind man (Levon Helm) who asks them a strange request (one of the best twists in the film, pay attention to this part).Arriaga once again wrote a life changing story in his well-known style that reminds us of a magic cube, where things are and aren't connected at the same time but you gotta stick to the end to see the whole picture formed perfectly to understand its complexity. It pales a little in comparison with his trilogy purely because of the introduction of Mike's wife in the story, most of the time she's very unnecessary to the plot until it appears a moment when Mike cries while watching a soap opera that she liked. Only this scene makes a bound between the two that seems relevant but watching as a whole if you remove her from the film it wouldn't make a difference. Other thing that is different from Arriaga's most famous screenplays is the use of humor in "Three Burials...", there's some pretty funny scenes like Mike trying to take Melquiades from the "American grave" without succeeding so much; a sex scene between Mike and his wife, being the most funniest thing of all with Mike's strange face during the act and the unimportance that the girl gives to him paying more attention to the soap opera she's watching and the cook she's preparing; and other scenes too. But all that humor doesn't extinguish the drama of this great story whose major moments is when Pete remembers all the good times he had with Melquiades (in these parts everything is spoken in Spanish and Jones is very fluent in this language), and includes the promise Pete had to make that covers the whole film.Tommy Lee Jones is the man on and off screen that makes of "Three Burials..." a great memorable film that seemed to resurrect his career that was a little sleepy, and gave the opportunity of working in classics like "No Country for Old Man" and "In the Valley of Elah" (very similar films in a way). Barry Pepper has a great performance and so does Dwight Yoakam, Melissa Leo, January Jones and Julio Cedillo in the supporting roles.A striking film about the accidents that change our lives, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad, but it is those accidents that makes us all connected. 10/10

*spoilers* Pete Perkins (Tommy Lee Jones) is a cattle rancher in southern Texas, near the Mexican border. One day Melquiades Estrada (Julio Cedillo) rides up on his horse looking for work and is taken on and becomes friends with Perkins. We understand that Estrada is an illegal. Enter Mike Norton (Barry Pepper), an over-zealous rookie U.S. Border Patrol agent. Pepper convincingly plays Norton as a self-centered, oversexed, quick-tempered, unsympathetic character with little redeeming social value. On lone patrol one morning Norton hears remote shots (Estrada shooting at a coyote). Upon investigating he sees Estrada and in haste fires and kills him.Perkins ultimately finds out that Norton is the culprit and, when he realizes that the local authorities are not pursuing the matter, he takes things into his own hands. He abducts Norton from his trailer and forces him to help carry out a promise Perkins made to Estrada to bury him in his home town of Jimenez, Mexico. This involves a long arduous trek on horseback into Mexico.During the course of this journey you are forced to consider questions that do not have clear answers. Perkins endangered Norton's life, so was he justified in his act of vigilantism? Perkins was an obsessive and stubborn man, could he not have used those personality traits to pursue the matter through the legal system? Would everybody in authority have the attitude that, "Well Estrada is just an illegal, so why bother with him?" I doubt that. And what if Estrada had been a legal Mexican American? How would the story have played out then? What if Estrada had been white, which could have been since Norton's act was impulsive? If the shooting of Estrada had wound up in the courts, Norton would probably have gotten a few years for involuntary manslaughter and, after a few years in prison, would he have emerged as an embittered criminal or repentant and changed for the better? Are we being encouraged to admire the extralegal justice administered by Perkins? Did Perkins initially have any agenda beyond vengeance? Estrada was a likable and hard-working fellow who certainly did not deserve his fate, but is the message being delivered here that all such Mexicans who want into the U.S. be allowed in? What is the answer to the immigration problem then? The policy currently in place seems woefully lacking and you have to think about what would be better. Some big questions surface at the end. Based on a photo and some directions sketched by Estada, Perkins tracks down Estrada's wife in Mexico, but she refuses to acknowledge the marriage. Estrada said he had not been back to Mexico for many years, but had he such little contact with his wife that she had given up on him and remarried? How does that scene change your opinion of Estrada? Nobody in the little town that Estrada had said was near his home in Jimenez had ever heard of Jimenez. Undaunted, Perkins set out in search of Jimenez and convinced himself that he found it. Was he in fact convinced? Did he really find it? Does it matter? Is he crazy? Did Estrada lie about his past? What would become of Perkins and Norton after Perkins rides off into the sunset at the end?The movie is artistically filmed. I never knew that the topography of southwest Texas could be so interesting and beautiful. Part of the appeal is due to filming that shows great attention to detail and use of color. The open landscape focuses attention on the two lone travelers.The casting is near ideal. Jones has perfected a grizzled look that projects melancholy, seeming to reflect some internal anguish or regret.I wish the friendship between Perkins and Estrada had been more well founded--we see but a few scenes of them together before Estrada gets shot. The long journey to the third burial is prolonged, but necessary to show the gradual transformation of Norton from ass to someone capable of caring for others. The redemption of Norton is complemented by that of the bigoted sheriff (Dwight Yoakam); when he has a chance to shoot at Perkins to stop his flight to Mexico, he can't get himself to do it and he finally divorces himself entirely from the whole affair by going on vacation.The acting, the landscape, and the ambiguities presented make this an engaging film.