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THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: When a Mexican illegal alien is killed, his employer and friend Pete Perkins (Tommy Lee Jones, who also directs) is unsatisfied that the authorities are going to do anything. Perkins finds the killer is a trigger-happy new border patrolman and decides that some justice will be done. Perkins forces the patrolman to execute the dead man's final wish. This is a modest, low-budget, and low-key film but Jones shows a sure hand and real directing power with handling his actors. Rating: +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10
Once it gets going, THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA is a sort of road film over territory where there are no roads. A trigger-happy border patrolman Mike Norton (played by Barry Pepper) accidentally kills a Mexican illegal immigrant. Pete Perkins (Tommy Lee Jones), a friend of the dead man conducts his own investigation and finds the killer was Norton. He kidnaps Norton and takes him at gunpoint on a journey to Estrada's village on the other side of the border. Chased by border patrolmen on horseback and in helicopters, the two ride and walk over difficult country in south Texas and northern Mexico. Though the issues are not the same, there are echoes here of 1962's great LONELY ARE THE BRAVE. Screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga cannot match the combined skills of that film's writers, Edward Abbey and Dalton Trumbo, but there is some of the same power in this story.
Arriaga is not very subtle in showing where his sympathies lie. His Mexican characters are somewhat idealized. All are decent, earthy people just trying to survive in a harsh world. There is rarely even a "chinga" in their speech. Most of his gringos live hopeless, dull lives that crawl at a snail's pace under the hot Texas sun. Their personal relationships are dysfunctional. They live at the boring, slow, and languorous pace of people living in Larry McMurtry novels. A few, mostly law enforcement officers, are actively nasty and evil. Mike Norton sees the illegal immigrants who pass by his territory as little more than animals, not unlike how he sees his wife. He seems to enjoy his job because it gives him a chance to hunt them and with little supervision he can read Hustler Magazine on the job. Pete, the Jones character, is a decent man who knows something should be done when his friend is killed. Jones usually plays his characters with the crispness of the characters he played in MEN IN BLACK and in THE FUGITIVE. Here he has the resolve, but seems more to be a man beaten down by the world. He finds there will be no justice from the authorities, so he has to take matters into his own hands. Arriaga won acclaim for his 21 GRAMS in which the sequences of the story were told in non-chronological and apparently random order. The early parts of this film are told in much the same way and it is quite difficult to keep track of the order of events. Chris Menges, who also recently filmed NORTH COUNTRY, captures the mountainous, sun-beaten beauty of the border country.
THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA is a simple, likable portrait of the personalities one find near the border. There is some anger at the American law enforcement officers but the film's main thrust is not anger for the Americans but respect for the aliens who come over the border looking to improve the lives of their families. I rate it a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Copyright 2006 Mark R. Leeper
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