Just so...so bad

Amateur movie with Big budget

Blistering performances.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

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.

I'm not kidding. This was THE WORST movie I've ever seen in my entire life. That's hours of my life I'll never get back. Avoid this awful waste of time at all costs. I think it might have taken years off of my life.First of all, I think this movie was more about making a political statement rather than entertainment. I am willing to look past that. I've come across some good movies that were pure propaganda. However, everything about this movie was terrible. The beginning was terrible. The plot was terrible. The climax was....non existent. The ending was absolutely ridiculous. Please, for the love of God, avoid this movie.

The directorial debut of Tommy Lee Jones may likely provide deep insight into Jones' own faith and the influence of author Flannery O'Connor. "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" provides a vista of the bleakness of man's sinfulness, and his need for grace and redemption. An easier to pronounce and less enigmatic title could have been "The Redemption of Mike Norton", but that would have been too revealing.The film, like the southern border wilderness where it is set, exposes the true nature of man – a dichotomy of the spiritual and mundane. As in our American judicial system it endorses vengeance as well as provides opportunity for forgiveness and rehabilitation. A powerful modern-day Western, "Three Burials" is written by Guillermo Arriaga, an award-winning Mexican screenwriter acclaimed for "Amores Perros" and "21 Grams." This screenplay does justice to Jones' focus in the film on death and redemption as most of Arriaga's stories have death as a central theme, likely a factor of his being raised in one of Mexico City's more violent barrios. It is evident these men have collaborated on a film that embodies laconic pace and visceral images in a western context; both can be viewed as an extension of Jones' Harvard thesis on author Flannery O'Connor:The film's O'Connor connection is not haphazard, with Mr. Jones identifying her, and the book of Ecclesiastes, as primary influences on the story. "You look for the allegorical intentions of what we're taught in the Bible, and then find some way to have it revealed or expressed by common experience. You'll find this happening over and over again in O'Connor, who was a rather classical Catholic thinker who wrote about nothing but backwoods north Georgia rednecks." In that same interview, Mr. Jones continues: "Ecclesiastes is essential to the movie as well. . . . It has to do with the passage of time. You want to start thinking as an actor that the past, the present, and the future are occurring simultaneously, and God requires an accounting of all three." There is ample evidence of a powerful link of this film to the book of Ecclesiastes and the stories of Flannery O'Connor; both of their themes are integral to this film: "Barry Pepper talked about the influence of the Bible and the works of Flannery O'Connor on The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, written and directed by Tommy Lee Jones. O'Connor is important to the way this movie is constructed," he continues. ''What you do is you consider some so-called religious thinking without the didacticism of the classical approach. You look for the allegorical intentions of what we're taught in the Bible, and then find some way to have it revealed or expressed by common experience." Jones adds: Also, family members of the film's co-producer, Michael Fitzgerald, are executors of O'Connor's literary estate. ''So we both knew our O'Connor rather well, and it was just a natural approach for me." The viewer is treated to a colorful and varied screen; from the opening pastel credits, wide rambling hills, mountains, and desert, to the stark filtered colors of the café and morgue. Jones accomplishes a remarkable task in directing, as well as doing some of his own camera work, and as lead actor. In front of the camera Jones heads the cast as Pete Perkins, a ranch foreman, who takes on a Mexican drifter, Melquiades Estrada (Julio Cedillo) who is obviously in the U.S. illegally. Pete seems taken with the man, who answers the question of what he does as: "I'm just a cowboy."For my full review (contains spoilers) with a view of Ecclesiastes: http://alturl.com/ghjbb

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.