Synopsis
When brash Texas border officer Mike Norton wrongfully kills and buries the friend and ranch hand of Pete Perkins, the latter is reminded of a promise he made to bury his friend, Melquiades Estrada, in his Mexican home town. He kidnaps Norton and exhumes Estrada's corpse, and the odd caravan sets out on horseback for Mexico.
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Cast
- Tommy Lee JonesPete Perkins
- Barry PepperMike Norton
- Dwight YoakamSheriff Frank Belmont
- January JonesLou Ann Norton
- Melissa LeoRachel
- Julio Cesar CedilloMelquiades Estrada
- Levon HelmOld Man with Radio
- Mel RodriguezCaptain Gomez
- Cecilia SuárezRosa
- Ignacio GuadalupeLucio
Recommendations
- 100
Los Angeles Times
Incisive yet supple, wrenching yet deeply pleasurable, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada easily ranks among the year's best pictures. - 90
Variety
Outstandingly realized on all levels. - 88
Rolling Stone
Sam Peckinpah lives! The rampaging spirit of the late filmmaker, known as Bloody Sam for films such as "The Wild Bunch" and "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia," is all over this blistering modern Western from first-time director Tommy Lee Jones. - 80
The Hollywood Reporter
Jones displays a firm hand at the helm -- you sense that he is well within his comfort zone in this environment -- and performances including his own are lively and convincing. - 80
The New York Times
In a film filled with plaintively expressive faces, characters say as much when they don't talk as when they speak Mr. Arriaga's dialogue, which sometimes sounds like hardscrabble poetry, sometimes sounds real as dirt and is, rather surprisingly, often darkly funny. - 75
New York Daily News
A small movie that plays like a Western epic. - 70
Village Voice
Arriaga's script (a prize at Cannes) has a lovely, fascinating shape to it, even if his crushing portrayal of white Americans--all of them, even Jones, suffering from a zombified affect and crippling shortsightedness--is somewhat counterset against his Mexicans, who are all morally balanced, if not always happy or nice. - 70
The A.V. Club
Jones directs with all the grit that's associated with his onscreen persona, but Peckinpah would never allow this degree of sentimentality to slip into one of his Westerns. A better comparison might be to Clint Eastwood, another tough-guy actor whose work as a director is often a little soft at the center.
