The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005)

Tommy Lee Jones
Barry Pepper
Julio Cedillo
Dwight Yokam
Vanessa Bauche

Directed by Tommy Lee Jones

Plot: A man is shot and quickly buried in the high desert of west Texas. The body is found and reburied in Van Horn's town cemetery. Pete Perkins, a local ranch foreman kidnaps a border patrolman and forces him to disinter the body. With his captive in tow and the body tied to a mule, Pete undertakes a dangerous and quixotic journey into Mexico.

Review: Here is a film that had no appeal to me other than Tommy Lee Jones being in it. When I found out he directed it too, I figured why not. I looked over it and saw it had a decent cast so figured it at least deserved a once over.

Tommy Lee Jones gives a good performance as usual, but also directs nicely. The film is full of beautiful imagery and great characters. I’m not a big Barry Pepper fan, but he gives a pretty good performance as well. The film starts a little slow, but gets interesting and picks up the pace as the story goes along. While watching this film, I found myself wondering and waiting to see what was going to be done to solve the murder investigation and if the person involved is brought to justice. The problem with this film, is I really didn’t care about any of the characters except Tommy Lee Jones, Barry Pepper and Julio Cedillo. Maybe this was meant to be the case, but I felt there was a lot of character development and they went nowhere. The meat of the story is good and drives the film, but the flashbacks and order of some of the editing choices make the film confusing at times. (not complicated, but there is no real warning to the story jumps) I enjoyed the film and think Tommy Lee Jones has potential to be a great director and think he is off to a decent start, but needs to find better ways to pace his future films.
 

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