rotten eggs

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada ( 2005 )

Tommy Lee Jones desrvedly won the 2005 Cannes Film Festival best actor award for this film , which he also directed. Showing there's more to his talent than acting which has gained him a strong presence in the movies for 35 years.

Although Three Burials has a rather unmemorable title , the film certainly is VERY memorable.Jones plays Pete Perkins, a laconic, weathered cattle ranch foreman inthe
bordercommunity of Van Horn, Texas. He has formed a closefriendship with Melquiades Estrada (Julio César

Cedillo), a cowboy from Mexico. Meanwhile, Mike Norton (Barry Pepper) and his beautiful if vapid blond wife Lou Ann (January Jones) have just come from Cincinnati to Van Horn, where Mike has a taken a job as a border patrolman. He reports to Dwight Yoakam's hard-nosed Capt. Frank Belmont, who refers to undocumented workers with a racial slur.


Mike and Lou Ann's lives peaked in high school, and the swiftly bored Lou Ann has little to sustain her. Mike is a mindless macho type who pores over Hustler magazine on the job and immediately displays a propensity for excessive violence in capturing illegal immigrants. When
Melquiades spots a fox menacing a herd of sheep he takes aim, and trigger-happy Mike, on duty nearby, returns fire, killing the cowboy.

Pete promised Mel that should Mel die he would see that his body was buried in his village in Mexico. With Pete, a man's word is taken seriously, and acting on a tip, he kidnaps Mike into accompanying him.


Arriaga backs into his story, alternating among its variousstrands, moving between past and present without warning; it's his way of plunging the audience into the lives of the various people who will soon interact in convoluted and unexpected ways.

The trek south of the border, which holds a climactic surprise revealing the depth of Melquiades' yearning for family ties and a life in an idyllic setting close to nature, is crucial in that it forces a
reevaluation of Mike, heretofore easily dismissed as a lethal jerk. The adventures and hardships become a transforming experience for him and reveal Pepper as a young actor of range and depth.

Beautifully photographed throughout , ' Three Burials ' recalls the gritty westerns of Bud Boetticher and there's more than a passing resemblance to Sam Peckinpahs ' Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia ' . Besides Tommy Lee Jones , Brad Pepper turns in a fine performance too. Definitely one to watch!


CRYSTAL EGG