Three Burials

Original title: The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

Genre: personal adventure drama

With: Tommy Lee Jones (Pete Perkins), Julio Cesar Cedillo (Melquiades Estrada), Melissa Leo (Rachel), Dwight Yoakam (Sheriff Frank Belmont), January Jones (Lou Ann Norton), Barry Pepper (Mike Norton), Vanessa Bauche (Mariana the healer), Levon Helm (the Old Man with the radio)

Director: Tommy Lee Jones

Screenplay: Guillermo Arriaga

Release: 2005

Studio: EuropaCorp, Javelina Film Company

Rating: R

MBiS score: 8.0/10

 

The Title Says Plenty But There’s Quite a Story Behind It  

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Story-line: when the body of Melquiades Estrada, an illegal immigrant, is found by hunters in the south of Texas, his employer, Pete Perkins, asks for his remains so he can take them back to Mexico. His request is denied but he chooses to press on.  

Pluses: an evenly good cast spearheaded by Tommy Lee Jones, a mysterious, graphic and well-constructed screenplay that uses flashbacks and flashforwards to tell its unusual story in a logical and interesting way, irreproachable direction, fine cinematography (especially in barren areas of the Lone Star State), adequate production values and a genuinely surprising ending.

Minuses: although welcome in such a bleak drama, the screenplay’s humorous moments tend to be macabre. 

Comments: THREE BURIALS is a modest and efficient film that plays on themes of moral duty, remorse, humility and brotherhood. It has no place for heroes – only for common folk who struggle with life, cut corners and sometimes do bad things – and doesn’t try to do more than the essential, a wise choice considering its serious subject matter. Whatever your tastes in cinema, you will find value in this offbeat and sincere contemporary western.   

  

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