SnoopyStyle This movie is shown with many flashbacks. A body is found in the desert of west Texas. Pete Perkins (Tommy Lee Jones) is the ranger who befriends an illegal Mexican cowboy named Melquiades Estrada. Belmont (Dwight Yoakam) is the sheriff in town. Mike Norton (Barry Pepper) is a new border agent. He and his wife Lou Ann (January Jones) buys a trailer and moves into town. Rachel (Melissa Leo) is the married waitress who is sleeping around.This is written by Guillermo Arriaga who has made a career with stories that goes forward and backwards in time. Tommy Lee Jones keeps the directions simple and lets his actors act. The back and forth in time is complicated enough. There is no need to get too fancy with the direction. It delivers a low level intensity in a desolate place. The movie takes its time. The story is a jigsaw puzzle that takes effort to put together. It slowly dawns on the audience what happened and it's a real moral quagmire. What seems simple at first starts getting more and more complicated. It is quite a piece of work.

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.

ElMaruecan82 One of the most overlooked masterpieces of the last decade … nothing against "No Country For Old Men", but I'd rather trade 'Art' for the unforgettable journey to which Tommy Lee Jones invites us in this modern Neo-Western film "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada".First, what a title! It could mislead by making you believe it's some kind of symbolism, but from the first minutes of the film, you understand that Melquiades is the name of the unfortunate odyssey's hero, and that he's dead. There's no way to resurrect him, but there will be three ways to bury him, understand: to prepare his soul for the last voyage. Burials in human civilizations have always carried a powerful meaning; it's a sign of respect, a way to honor those who are not with us anymore. And Death is not a barrier, when it's a matter of respect and honor.The pacing of the first act is quite slow, conveying with efficiency an atmosphere of boredom and meaninglessness. The movie is set in a small town in the Tex-Mex border whose natural geography offers perfect opportunities for emigrants, to enter illegally. So the town is regulated by the eternal cycle of Mexicans trying to penetrate the frontier and border patrol trying to catch them. This is the town's routine outside while inside, people try to fill their time, by sunbathing, watching insipid soap operas, and banging the restaurant owner's wife, Rachel, Melissa Leo, sexy as ever. There's a feeling of a ghost town where the only living people are actually the cowboys, the only ones who domesticate the wildness and hostility of the place as they do for bulls and horses. They are the present, incarnating both a remaining connection with the past and a light of hope for the future. And this universe is Pete and Mel's routine, two friends, a veteran cow-boy with a stone face and a heart of gold, and a young 'vachero' who wants to work in what he does the best. The friendship between Pete and Mel is crucial as it will cement Pete's feeling of duty, when Mel will be accidentally killed. It's not a revenge story, this is no film for clichés, it's always about respect. It's a man's film that would have made proud the late Sam Peckinpah.And it's interesting to note, how like some old westerns, the movie almost associates the idea of virility with the cowboy world, while the other men seem to lack this quality. The town is governed by boredom, by a sort of emasculating nothingness. The restaurant owner is the most notorious cuckold in town, but the lovers are not the fastest guns in town either ... or they are. It's ironic that in a comic relief scene, the chief police, Belmont, the one who's got the power, has sexual troubles, the kind that affects his self-confidence. But it's a good premonition of the Police's impotence in Melquiades' case, convincing Pete to do the vigilante … and we sure trust him that he'll handle the case better than Belmont, as he proved to handle Rachel quite better. Let the men tackle this. Still, Melquiades is pictured as a timid man with girls. His apparent sweetness makes his death even sadder, especially because the border patrol guy who killed him, Mike Norton, is a totally opposite character.Mike Norton is a selfish insecure scumbag who visibly hates his life. Indeed, there's something bitter in his whole attitude, and it's hard to believe he was popular once. Barry Pepper plays perfectly the man who constantly vents his anger on the others, not hesitating to punch in the face a Mexican girl who was running away, not the likeliest character to inspire our sympathy. And it's not his sordid sex scene with Lou Ann, his wife played by January Jones, that would contradict this feeling. Pepper as Norton was outstanding and I can't go without mentioning when after cutting his nail toes, he did what I expected him to do. Gross, but authentic. His lack of virile satisfaction fills his life with a boredom he can only satisfy it with the help of a Hustler magazine. Pathetic but also tragic as this will lead to the accidental killing.I took my time to get to the point, but so did the film that needed a long prologue before the odyssey started. Like "The Godfather", it had the time to present the characters, and like "The Godfather", it's about an evolution, not a corruption this time, but a redemption. The story starts when the flash-backs end, and when taking Norton as a hostage, Pete will order him to dig up Mel's corpse in order to bury him in Mexico, in his hometown. Two men and a corpse guiding them, the corpse is still present as if Mel was alive, as if his soul wasn't in peace yet, and this is the whole point: saving souls. Pete has a duty as friend, Mel had to be respected, and Mike was offered an opportunity to redeem himself. In their route, they'll meet a blind man asking them to kill him, he doesn't want to commit suicide, not to offend God, but neither does Pete. They'll meet the Mexican girl who'll show Norton the other side of the mirror, and teach him one thing or two about respect.And at the end, there's Norton, the soul of this film who, through a nightmarish journey, will repent of his acts asking Mel's soul to forgive him in one of the most emotional breakdowns ever, that decided Pete to finally release his prisoner as his initiation was over. One of the greatest masterpieces of the 2000's, sublimated by a dazzling cinematography, "The Three Burials" is a true gem that should have earned many Oscar nominations … including one for Barry Pepper, who proved through Norton that it's never too late to change, for the better

johnnyboyz The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is a wonderfully paced, devilishly involving piece constructed of various segments revolving around the death and consequent burying of a Mexican immigrant in contemporary Texas. At its core is Tommy Lee-Jones doing on camera what he's done a few times very recently, playing an elderly gentleman wondering just what on Earth is happening to the world and the people all around him within it; in what is a remarkable turn given it's his film to direct and manoeuvre on top of playing the rock of the piece. The film is largely influenced by films and certain directors of old, it being able to capture the raw and dusty locale of Texas in a highly effective manner as it blends traditions of age-old genres with both new and contemporary settings and domestic issues. In short, it's a gripping yarn which navigates a series of hairpin turns and dramatic set pieces as various physical and then-some elements combine in a baking hot middle of nowhere.The film will follow local man Pete Perkins (Jones) on one strand and a certain Mike Norton (Pepper) on the other, before brashly bringing them together for a trek across the hot, dusty terrain in which both of them will come to learn and understand various items. Norton is a border patrol guard working on the line that separates the U.S. with Mexico, a relatively young and fresh face to the job, and one that does not uphold certain characteristics that come with both the uniform he bares and the responsibility it demands. Norton's brutality against those of a Mexican ilk whom attempt to cross the border is stark and reactionary, violent in the breaking of one individual's nose as an empty and seemingly anonymous relationship with girlfriend Lou Ann (Jones) back home results in passionless sex and her own gross inability to connect with her new surroundings.His journey with Perkins, for reasons that'll become more evident, offers a chance at both reconciliation with certain sorts of people as well as the chance to identify an epiphany related to procedure and responsibility, the sort which ought to come with the wearing of that uniform and the shouldering of the task at hand to keep those breaking the law from doing so. Norton's systematic abusing and ignoring of this power returns to haunt him when he is rendered second in-tow and relegated to being pulled along as a lackey with Perkins on their expedition, an expedition Perkins dreams up out of respect and a promise to fulfil duty should it ever come his way; the very attributes Norton ought to embody in regards to his border patrol tasks. This brings us to the Melquiades Estrada (Cedillo) of the title, a certain Mexican immigrant who had befriended Perkins over time as indulgence in women; the sharing of where one is in life at that point and so fourth ignite a connection between the two, but whose life is dramatically cut short one day when he's accidentally shot dead.The film runs on some rather deep substance to do with responsibility and the connection in friendship one man shares with another, with the brilliance of the screenplay from Mexican born Guillermo Arriaga keeping it from ever being a one man show. This is not a series of pratfalls and incidences in which Norton must be knocked down; learn and then get back up again ready for the next lesson, this is as much Jones' character's film as it is Pepper's. The film begins in somewhat of a western sense with a long, slow tracking shot across the sandy deserts of Texas before panning left to reveal two guys riding into closer view, not on separate horses, but in a jeep. One of them spies a coyote and doesn't think twice to open fire, one of many incidences in which Americans charged with law enforcing opt for the choice of two options that'll force us into thinking negatively of them. Arriaga's screenplay is rather interestingly full of victimised Mexicans and gung-ho Americans, the likes of whom cover-up accidental deaths; do the minimum of what's required; in Lou Ann's disgusted observation of an obese neighbour, generally come across as shallow as possible, and, it would seem, shoot animals on sight in violent fits of apparent boredom. The exception is, of course, the character played by the director for the piece; someone that connects with one of the film's few truthfully fleshed out Mexicans.Jones and Arriaga's toying with genre is good fun, and their calling to mind of various texts displays a real fondness for the field they're working in. They love the Texan desert like some of the past masters have loved both the sandy Italian wilderness and Monument Valley, respectively; the exchanges between Perkins and Norton as they're on the road to the destination quaintly calling to mind Tuco and Blondie's games of oneupmanship which were again in the desert and which again saw one man on horseback chastise another. This, as an essence of Pekinpah looms large over proceedings; the two are not transporting a bag of money to Mexico complete with all the elements after them, nor indeed are they in possession of a dead man's head: these two are shifting the whole thing. The film maintains a gloriously effective overall tone of relative dishevelment, a piece that runs its characters through a grinder in which the goal is having to bury a good friend; and whilst succeeding will bring its own taste of accomplishment, nothing will ever bring the person back again. Jones' frequent downcast expression and Pepper's desperate longing to be anywhere else but where he is are at the core of it, but all of it combines with imagery and a sense of spectacle to deliver one of the best films of its respective year.