svikasha Texas is a beautiful country with a stunning, flat landscape, characteristic people, and, unfortunately, pervasive racism. Although Texas was once a part of Mexico, the political climate of immigration has brought out an ugly side of Texas that lies in stark contrast to the beauty of the state itself. Mexicans are not welcome in Texas. It is with this premise that the "Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" begins. In the beginning of the film, an undocumented Mexican ranch worker named Melquiades Estrada from the town of Jiménez is unjustly murdered by a trigger-happy border agent in the dry heat of Texas. The scene is particularly haunting since the movie was inspired by the real-life killing in Texas of Esequiel Hernandez Jr. by a United States Marine. The man who kills Estrada is a border agent named Mike Norton who has a penchant for racism and a bad habit of casually raping his wife and brutalizing women. The lines between good and evil are clearly drawn at the beginning of the film. Unfortunately, the law doesn't always recognize this line. As a border agent with a recognized right to carry a firearm and be in the country, Estrada gets murdered and the Norton gets away. Well, almost, anyways. Pete Perkins ensures otherwise. The tough cowboy, who is played by Tommy Lee Jones, learns of Estrada's murder and the following cover up by law enforcement. Not content to let such an injustice go unanswered, in classic western style, Perkins drags Michael Norton and Estrada's corpse all the way from Texas to Jiménez in Mexico while being relentlessly pursued by border agents. On the journey, Perkins forces Norton to come to terms with his racism, his lack of empathy, and the raw injustice of his actions towards Estrada. The two end up developing a strange bond that elevate's Norton's character. Although the film contains stunning visual scenes of both rural Texas and rural Mexico, the real beauty of the film comes out in the ending. Although the "Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" has all the ingredients to be a classic tale of revenge in the form of a modern western, instead it takes the more difficult route of telling a tale of redemption. Norton, after being shown the error of his ways by Perkins, eventually comes around and is given a second chance. Nobody is too far gone for redemption. That is why the film has the potential to become an instant classic. It is a fitting legacy for the directorial debut of veteran actor Tommy Lee Jones.

altereggonyc 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.

Aristides-2 Several times while watching this awful movie I thought of Bugs Bunny. After the movie was over I realized why I had these thoughts: Bugs would occasionally 'reach' into his body and pull out something he needed to further the story. It could be a blowtorch, fully operative, or a bowling ball or a weapon. So too with Three Burials. When the story advances to the road aspect of the movie, we get 'surprise' devices like .... finding a blind man listening to a radio in the boonies somewhere in Mexico .....how this living-alone, elderly impoverished sightless man was able to find the fuel to run the .....presumed..... generator since his cancer-ridden son hadn't visited in six months is a different story problem...... The sub-professional screenwriter .....of this movie....., Arriaga, then reaches for the blow torch again when the Barry Pepper character 'escapes' from captivity and enters a cave to hide only to be bitten by a rattlesnake! .....how this beaten-up man, dispirited, exhausted, malnourished, riding without a hat in the daytime Mexican sun then slung over a horse and riding for unknown hours, over rough terrain, could survive a rattlesnake bite is another story whopper too...... There were other fanciful inventions like the ones mentioned but on to other problems with this movie. Repeated flashbacks can be acceptable in telling a story but only when the question is answered, "Would the story work better being told in a more linear fashion"? During the early parts of Three Burials I was confused several times when characters I was just beginning to learn about were time shifted backwards. For this viewer, the confusion this caused wasn't worth the effort itself and the story would have been clearer had they told it straight forward. .....Plus, later on, this creaky device is just dropped from the movie altogether!..... Something else now: Is Arriaga making a political statement by showing virtually all of the white Americans as defectives in one way or another while all the Latino's are benign, generous and overall, good guys? More: The character played by Jones is certifiably insane. Really weird guy. Next: In brief but numerous flashbacks they show the relationship between Pete and Melquiades as a deep one of mutual trust and affection. How then to deal with the duplicity of Melquiades in telling Pete about his non-existent family in Jimenez? Is this something you would do to a good friend when talking about your death and how you would want your family notified? It's pathological and calls into question M.'s character. Finally: Three burials take place. The final one, after all the tedious agony Pete's gone through to have it occur, is a half-ass job with the body not even deeply/fully buried. The local animals would have his remains eaten and spread all over the place, assuming of course, that there would be anything edible after all the amateur embalming that has taken place. PS: Why the need to show the corpse over and over again?

classicsoncall Here's the kind of movie that appears every once in a great while that actually makes you think, and more so, reflect on such intrinsic human traits as loyalty, friendship, integrity, and alienation. Coming out as recently as four years ago, it's a film I had never even heard of until it made the rounds on Encore Westerns recently, and even then, it's title didn't interest me enough to tune in at the time. However with the luxury of a few days free time on my hands, I managed to pick it up at my local library. To say that the movie is mesmerizing would be somewhat of an understatement. It's morbid and fascinating at the same time, a slow motion train wreck that begins with the Tarantino-esqe convention of a non-linear story line, then descends into a nightmare reality for it's principal players as the viewer simply can't imagine how it will all turn out.The movie was oddly reminiscent for me of two other films, one from four decades ago, and another quite recent. The picture's early treatment of alienation among it's characters, (Lou Ann and Mike, Rachel and Bob) was as powerful here as it was in 1971's "The Last Picture Show", both taking place in the stark heat and dust of the American Southwest. With a small town population one could virtually count on just a few hands, both films dwell on the notion that "It's always the same, always the same" - with the perverse realization that whatever you do doesn't remain a secret very long. So the indiscretions of a waitress are known to everyone, and stepping outside of the town's comfort zone is a concern for one and all.The other picture that comes to mind is another Tommy Lee Jones vehicle, the recent "No Country For Old Men". Both stories lend themselves to a randomness of events that at any moment threaten to spiral out of control. Gunshot wounds and rattlesnake bites are unseen and unintended consequences of moving in the wrong direction, while even well thought out plans never foresee potential obstacles along the way. With both pictures, you're left with the uncomfortable sense that the Tommy Lee Jones character remains joyless and without direction, even with closure. Both finales are as powerful as they come.It's been a few days now since I've watched 'Three Burials' and I'm still thinking about it. That's in no small measure to those ghastly and grotesque sequences when Pete (Tommy Lee) battles the ants and applies the antifreeze embalming. Is it weird to suppress an involuntary chuckle while at the same time you're going 'WTF'? But there's also the relationship Pete forges and forces with Mike (Barry Pepper) while on the trail to complete his mission. It's a surreal crossroads both men arrive at when Mike asks Pete if he's going to be OK, but no stranger than asking the same question of the man he killed.