Movie audiences have always loved a good revenge story, and never more so than since 9/11. We can't get retribution for the wrongs committed against us in the real world, so we look for it in our movie theatres.
Tommy Lee Jones adds another to the long line of revenge fables that have appeared in the last few years, and the results are mostly lacklustre. However, his film adds a refreshing twist to the standard revenge formula, and that if nothing else makes his film memorable.
Jones stars as Pete, a taciturn cowboy living out in the middle of nowhere (aka Texas), who befriends an illegal Mexican immigrant, Melquiades. When Melquiades is shot and killed by a hot-head border patrol guard named Mike Norton(Barry Pepper), Pete kidnaps him and, the body of Melquiades in tow, heads for Mexico, where he intends to honor his promise to his friend and bury him in his home town. Norton suspects Pete's ultimate plan is to kill him in revenge, but the aforementioned refreshing twist is that Pete really just wants Norton to ask for forgiveness for his wrongs; more killing is not what Pete has in mind.
This is a promising idea, but the promise is not fulfilled. The movie starts strongly, with bits and pieces told in an out of whack chronology, and a host of other characters introduced whose roles in the story we wait to discover: a local police officer and friend to Pete (Dwight Yoakam), a waitress in a diner and mistress to Pete (Melissa Leo), the young and bored wife of Norton (January Jones). But sadly, all of these characters dissolve from the movie (the women especially) to make way for Pete and Norton's grotesque journey for the border, that's equal parts "As I Lay Dying" and Homer's "Odyssey" (Jones even works in a meaningless sequence with a blind man who comes to the pair's aid). The characters of Pete and Norton remain frustratingly opaque, and neither of them changes much over the course of the film. The progressively disintegrating corpse of Melquiades is used to ghoulishly comic effect, but that disrupts the tone of the story. And Jones uses a heavy hand to address the racism between Mexicans and whites that exists as a constant state of affairs in that part of the country. I suppose Jones's message about the nobility of the Mexican race is aimed at those who need to hear it, but those who need to hear it wouldn't be watching a movie like this in the first place, which leaves the rest of us feeling preached at and talked down to.
"The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" is a noble effort that doesn't really work.
Grade: B-
Tommy Lee Jones adds another to the long line of revenge fables that have appeared in the last few years, and the results are mostly lacklustre. However, his film adds a refreshing twist to the standard revenge formula, and that if nothing else makes his film memorable.
Jones stars as Pete, a taciturn cowboy living out in the middle of nowhere (aka Texas), who befriends an illegal Mexican immigrant, Melquiades. When Melquiades is shot and killed by a hot-head border patrol guard named Mike Norton(Barry Pepper), Pete kidnaps him and, the body of Melquiades in tow, heads for Mexico, where he intends to honor his promise to his friend and bury him in his home town. Norton suspects Pete's ultimate plan is to kill him in revenge, but the aforementioned refreshing twist is that Pete really just wants Norton to ask for forgiveness for his wrongs; more killing is not what Pete has in mind.
This is a promising idea, but the promise is not fulfilled. The movie starts strongly, with bits and pieces told in an out of whack chronology, and a host of other characters introduced whose roles in the story we wait to discover: a local police officer and friend to Pete (Dwight Yoakam), a waitress in a diner and mistress to Pete (Melissa Leo), the young and bored wife of Norton (January Jones). But sadly, all of these characters dissolve from the movie (the women especially) to make way for Pete and Norton's grotesque journey for the border, that's equal parts "As I Lay Dying" and Homer's "Odyssey" (Jones even works in a meaningless sequence with a blind man who comes to the pair's aid). The characters of Pete and Norton remain frustratingly opaque, and neither of them changes much over the course of the film. The progressively disintegrating corpse of Melquiades is used to ghoulishly comic effect, but that disrupts the tone of the story. And Jones uses a heavy hand to address the racism between Mexicans and whites that exists as a constant state of affairs in that part of the country. I suppose Jones's message about the nobility of the Mexican race is aimed at those who need to hear it, but those who need to hear it wouldn't be watching a movie like this in the first place, which leaves the rest of us feeling preached at and talked down to.
"The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" is a noble effort that doesn't really work.
Grade: B-