The Three Burials of Melquiadas Estrada

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Three, that’s the number of times they bury old . . . what’s his name? One of the reasons this fairly good film is having problems filling seats is the title: no one can remember it. Though it may be politically correct to have a Spanish name other than Juan or Pedro, it becomes a liability when it’s difficult to remember and even more so if most of the movie going public can‘t pronounce it. They may go but they won‘t talk about it. The title issue is not the only reason this first time directorial debut by Tommy Lee Jones is not selling tickets.

The Three Burials of Melquiadas Estrada has many brilliant moments, a great cast of characters and plays to the cowboy myth that continues to survive in pockets, even today, on both sides of the border. This comes across succinctly when Melquiadas Estrada first meets Pete Perkins, ranch foreman, and states “Yo soy un caballero.” This moment bridges the world between the two men. It’s here one senses the movie might have some honest potential. This is soon shredded away as the film progress into a morass of scenes too heavy handed and created solely to build character for people that we don’t really need to care about.

The premise that attracted me to the film, is excellent. Three Burials is a revenge story that intends to replace the obligatory death finale with an object lesson. Pete Perkins (Tommy Lee Jones) and one of his hired-hands, an undocumented worker, Melquiadas Estrada (Julio Cedillo), become best friends. When Melquiadas is murdered Pete looks for, and finds the killer, Border Patrolman, Mike Norton (Barry Pepper). He kidnaps Norton and forces him to exhume the corpse of Melquiadas. Handcuffed, Norton is taken to the hovel where Melquiadas lived and at gunpoint is compelled to drink from the dead man’s cup and dress in his poor work clothes. This is where the trek for the two men begins. On horseback Perkins takes Norton to Mexico to return Melquiadas to his home, for burial . His motivation is based on a promise made to Melquiadas, but it weakens the story. What should have been and could have been a great story dwindles to blind obeisance to a dead man’s wishes that in the end turn out to be either false or corrupted by time, we‘re never quite sure which.

In story-land this trek is a revenge process for Perkins. In movie-land the trek is normally a place where characters develop their arc, the thing that leaves us satisfied at the end. What happens here is that so much time is spent at the beginning of the film on characters in the border town- people that we don’t need to be involved with- and the trek time is shorted leaving us without characters we understand or feel sympathetic toward. One of the finest examples of this in recent movie making is O’Brother. In that film the characters go on a journey and take us with them. But the journey starts right away, it gives us time to learn about the characters so that in the end we understand, sympathize and like these simple criminals. Not so in Three Burials. The object lesson becomes blurred and the story lost.

Though I think the writing went astray, there are good characters, good scenes and Tommy Lee does a fairly good job directing. This will be a fine film to see, once it comes to video.