The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA
OPTIMUM RELEASING
RELEASED 31 March 2006
The 1997 murder of Esequiel Hernandez Jr. was the first killing of an American citizen by a U.S. soldier since Kent State in 1970. The soft-spoken 18-year-old grew up along the banks of the Rio Grande. He knew the river. He knew its ways. He knew its people. But what he didn’t know was that his own government had posted four heavily armed, fully camouflaged Marines a few hundred yards away from his family’s home. They had been sent to his Texas town on a counter drug mission, yet instead of surveilling smugglers the Marines stalked this innocent youngster for almost half an hour and, after receiving radio approval from their commanders, shot and killed Zeke ‘in self-defense’ at a distance of 150 yards.
One county over, a West Texan waited and watched as first one grand jury and then a second reviewed the evidence of this crime. A Congressional investigation ensued. Yet no one was ever charged for the murder of Esequiel Hernandez Jr. This failure not only infuriated actor and director Tommy Lee Jones, but it inspired him to condemn this injustice with the most powerful tool at his disposal: the art of filmmaking.
To create this border saga, Jones sought out a collaborator, screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga (‘21 Grams’). Jones had befriended Arriaga after watching ‘Amores Perros’, a film based on Arriaga’s gripping script about life, love, and death in Mexico City. Arriaga’s lucid ability to explore and evoke distinctive cultures motivated Jones to invite him to craft a much different narrative, one about the desolate lands and driven individuals who live and work along the border.
Taking his second turn in the director’s chair with ‘The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada’, Tommy Lee Jones places the action on the border between West Texas and Northern Chihuahua in Mexico, which is a hot spot for illegal crossings. Jones’s movie ingeniously flips this dangerous yet all-too-common practice on its head, with a tale of a man hell-bent on crossing the border in the opposite direction.
The journey to Mexico begins when Pete Perkins (Jones) uncovers the identity of a Border Patrolman, Mike Norton (Barry Pepper), who has shot and killed his best friend, Melquiades Estrada (Julio Cedillo). Kidnapping Norton and forcing him to dig up Estrada’s body, Perkins straps the corpse to a horse, and informs Norton that he will be traveling with them to Mexico. Once there, they will bury Estrada according to instructions he gave Perkins prior to his death. Jones paints Norton as a mean-spirited individual; caught up in a loveless relationship with his wife, Lou Ann (January Jones), Norton’s day job frequently involves him him either exploding in a violent rage or idly flicking through a well-thumbed copy of Hustler. The two men don’t exactly bond on their journey, the wedge that’s been forced between them being far too great for them to reconcile their differences.
Jones has coerced a riveting tale from Guillermo Arriaga’s script, with a choppy chronology reminiscent of Arriaga’s own ‘21 Grams’. Comparisons to Sam Peckinpah’s masterfully bleak 1974 movie ‘Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia’ are inevitable, although Jones’s film has a tender edge that Peckinpah’s nihilistic epic was never quite capable of reaching. Visual influences other than Peckinpah include Kabuki Theatre, the art of Donald Judd and Dan Flavin, and the films of Akira Kurosawa.
The film Jones has created is a study of such contrasts, one whose Biblical twists turn oppressor into oppressed, hunter into hunted, and lawmen into lawless. Such a storyline might seem out of place or even far-fetched in many locales, but it is in fact an indigenous element of this land along the border and the people whose lives it dominates.
Featuring plenty of memorable scenes and an overall ‘lingering power’, ‘Three Burials’ also features a rugged, no-nonsense lead performance from Tommy Lee Jones, showing none of his manic/barking acting we usually get from fare like ‘The Fugitive’ and ‘Men in Black’. It’s no surprise to see ‘Jones’ won best actor at Cannes. Also praiseworthy is Barry Pepper’s performance as the violent trigger-happy border patrol cop. Even more praise for the guy when you consider he was the hero in that all-time stinker ‘Battlefield Earth’. That film would have made most actors look for another profession. Travolta’s never been the same since!
Above everything ‘The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada’ is a story of friendship, a friendship that goes beyond borders, one that continues even after death. When Melquiades gives his most precious possession to Pete, it makes no sense at all…until you consider their friendship. When Pete risks his life to travel to Mexico, it makes no sense at all… until you consider his friendship with Melquiades.
FOUR OUT OF FIVE