ClassyWas Excellent, smart action film.

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Calum Hutton It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

tao902 A Mexican ranch hand, Melquiades Estrada, is shot by a bigoted border control guard. The body is hastily buried and the murder covered up. The body is found and given an anonymous, formal burial in the local cemetery. The Mexican's American ranch hand friend, Peter Perkins, investigates the murder and tracks down the killer. He forces the killer to dig up the body and help him take it back to the Mexican's hometown for his third and final burial. On a long, arduous and frequently amusing journey the killer gradually changes until he eventually begs forgiveness, presumably rethinks his existence and eventually forms some kind of friendship with his captor who has made him suffer for his crime.A wonderfully quirky and comic film.

Ben Larson There is no doubt that this one of the best movies in 2006. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada really captures your attention and never lets go. I know that many people have seen Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive and U.S. Marshals. This is really the same character, in a sense, just looking really scruffy and hard, instead of the smooth look of Marshal Samuel Gerard. He has the same steely purpose in getting his man and keeping his promises. To see his resolve and determination, no matter what it takes, is amazing. This character was made for Jones, and his direction is magnificent. Unlike Brokeback Mountain, which was a love story, this is a real cowboy film. It is hard, dirty, funny, and real. The scenery is breathtaking, and no punches are pulled. It is not a revenge movie, but one that deals with compassion, racism, and promises. Barry Pepper brings a character that he did well in such movies as We Were Soldiers, The Green Mile, and Saving Private Ryan. Needless to say, he is a changed man after Jones gets through with him. There were no snakes on a plane, but there was a snake on the plain, and that really provided some of the best comedy in this film. Some may not like the way the story jumps from past to present and back, but it really makes the film, and helps you to understand the complexity of what Jones is achieving. In a sense, it emulates Crash, and it also brings the same message. If they are going to bring the western back like this, I will be a fan.

johnnyboyz The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is a wonderfully paced, devilishly involving piece constructed of various segments revolving around the death and consequent burying of a Mexican immigrant in contemporary Texas. At its core is Tommy Lee-Jones doing on camera what he's done a few times very recently, playing an elderly gentleman wondering just what on Earth is happening to the world and the people all around him within it; in what is a remarkable turn given it's his film to direct and manoeuvre on top of playing the rock of the piece. The film is largely influenced by films and certain directors of old, it being able to capture the raw and dusty locale of Texas in a highly effective manner as it blends traditions of age-old genres with both new and contemporary settings and domestic issues. In short, it's a gripping yarn which navigates a series of hairpin turns and dramatic set pieces as various physical and then-some elements combine in a baking hot middle of nowhere.The film will follow local man Pete Perkins (Jones) on one strand and a certain Mike Norton (Pepper) on the other, before brashly bringing them together for a trek across the hot, dusty terrain in which both of them will come to learn and understand various items. Norton is a border patrol guard working on the line that separates the U.S. with Mexico, a relatively young and fresh face to the job, and one that does not uphold certain characteristics that come with both the uniform he bares and the responsibility it demands. Norton's brutality against those of a Mexican ilk whom attempt to cross the border is stark and reactionary, violent in the breaking of one individual's nose as an empty and seemingly anonymous relationship with girlfriend Lou Ann (Jones) back home results in passionless sex and her own gross inability to connect with her new surroundings.His journey with Perkins, for reasons that'll become more evident, offers a chance at both reconciliation with certain sorts of people as well as the chance to identify an epiphany related to procedure and responsibility, the sort which ought to come with the wearing of that uniform and the shouldering of the task at hand to keep those breaking the law from doing so. Norton's systematic abusing and ignoring of this power returns to haunt him when he is rendered second in-tow and relegated to being pulled along as a lackey with Perkins on their expedition, an expedition Perkins dreams up out of respect and a promise to fulfil duty should it ever come his way; the very attributes Norton ought to embody in regards to his border patrol tasks. This brings us to the Melquiades Estrada (Cedillo) of the title, a certain Mexican immigrant who had befriended Perkins over time as indulgence in women; the sharing of where one is in life at that point and so fourth ignite a connection between the two, but whose life is dramatically cut short one day when he's accidentally shot dead.The film runs on some rather deep substance to do with responsibility and the connection in friendship one man shares with another, with the brilliance of the screenplay from Mexican born Guillermo Arriaga keeping it from ever being a one man show. This is not a series of pratfalls and incidences in which Norton must be knocked down; learn and then get back up again ready for the next lesson, this is as much Jones' character's film as it is Pepper's. The film begins in somewhat of a western sense with a long, slow tracking shot across the sandy deserts of Texas before panning left to reveal two guys riding into closer view, not on separate horses, but in a jeep. One of them spies a coyote and doesn't think twice to open fire, one of many incidences in which Americans charged with law enforcing opt for the choice of two options that'll force us into thinking negatively of them. Arriaga's screenplay is rather interestingly full of victimised Mexicans and gung-ho Americans, the likes of whom cover-up accidental deaths; do the minimum of what's required; in Lou Ann's disgusted observation of an obese neighbour, generally come across as shallow as possible, and, it would seem, shoot animals on sight in violent fits of apparent boredom. The exception is, of course, the character played by the director for the piece; someone that connects with one of the film's few truthfully fleshed out Mexicans.Jones and Arriaga's toying with genre is good fun, and their calling to mind of various texts displays a real fondness for the field they're working in. They love the Texan desert like some of the past masters have loved both the sandy Italian wilderness and Monument Valley, respectively; the exchanges between Perkins and Norton as they're on the road to the destination quaintly calling to mind Tuco and Blondie's games of oneupmanship which were again in the desert and which again saw one man on horseback chastise another. This, as an essence of Pekinpah looms large over proceedings; the two are not transporting a bag of money to Mexico complete with all the elements after them, nor indeed are they in possession of a dead man's head: these two are shifting the whole thing. The film maintains a gloriously effective overall tone of relative dishevelment, a piece that runs its characters through a grinder in which the goal is having to bury a good friend; and whilst succeeding will bring its own taste of accomplishment, nothing will ever bring the person back again. Jones' frequent downcast expression and Pepper's desperate longing to be anywhere else but where he is are at the core of it, but all of it combines with imagery and a sense of spectacle to deliver one of the best films of its respective year.

classicsoncall Here's the kind of movie that appears every once in a great while that actually makes you think, and more so, reflect on such intrinsic human traits as loyalty, friendship, integrity, and alienation. Coming out as recently as four years ago, it's a film I had never even heard of until it made the rounds on Encore Westerns recently, and even then, it's title didn't interest me enough to tune in at the time. However with the luxury of a few days free time on my hands, I managed to pick it up at my local library. To say that the movie is mesmerizing would be somewhat of an understatement. It's morbid and fascinating at the same time, a slow motion train wreck that begins with the Tarantino-esqe convention of a non-linear story line, then descends into a nightmare reality for it's principal players as the viewer simply can't imagine how it will all turn out.The movie was oddly reminiscent for me of two other films, one from four decades ago, and another quite recent. The picture's early treatment of alienation among it's characters, (Lou Ann and Mike, Rachel and Bob) was as powerful here as it was in 1971's "The Last Picture Show", both taking place in the stark heat and dust of the American Southwest. With a small town population one could virtually count on just a few hands, both films dwell on the notion that "It's always the same, always the same" - with the perverse realization that whatever you do doesn't remain a secret very long. So the indiscretions of a waitress are known to everyone, and stepping outside of the town's comfort zone is a concern for one and all.The other picture that comes to mind is another Tommy Lee Jones vehicle, the recent "No Country For Old Men". Both stories lend themselves to a randomness of events that at any moment threaten to spiral out of control. Gunshot wounds and rattlesnake bites are unseen and unintended consequences of moving in the wrong direction, while even well thought out plans never foresee potential obstacles along the way. With both pictures, you're left with the uncomfortable sense that the Tommy Lee Jones character remains joyless and without direction, even with closure. Both finales are as powerful as they come.It's been a few days now since I've watched 'Three Burials' and I'm still thinking about it. That's in no small measure to those ghastly and grotesque sequences when Pete (Tommy Lee) battles the ants and applies the antifreeze embalming. Is it weird to suppress an involuntary chuckle while at the same time you're going 'WTF'? But there's also the relationship Pete forges and forces with Mike (Barry Pepper) while on the trail to complete his mission. It's a surreal crossroads both men arrive at when Mike asks Pete if he's going to be OK, but no stranger than asking the same question of the man he killed.