A man in a cowboy hat on a high Southwestern mesa brings his gun to bear on two riders far below. As he takes aim, we feel the satisfying pull of the traditional Western movie.
| Masterful: A wonderful and complex Western directed by and starring Tommy Lee Jones. Both traditional and modern, the film tells of cowboy Jones taking the corpse of a friend down to Mexico.
Rated: R rating is for violence, language, subject matter. Now showing: Meridian, Metro |
And then his cell phone rings.
This is a telling scene from “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada,” a wonderful and complex new movie directed by and starring Tommy Lee Jones. While this film has much of the sagebrush romanticism of the old-fashioned Western, it is stubbornly clear-eyed about its modern setting.
The film is written by the gifted Mexican screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, who also did “Amores Perros” and “21 Grams.” Like those films, this one has a slightly fractured sense of time.
In the Texas border country, a young, ignorant guy named Mike Norton (Barry Pepper) joins the illegal immigration patrol. One day he accidentally shoots and kills a ranchhand named Melquiades Estrada (Julio Cesar Cedillo) and then runs away from the scene.
After the body is discovered, the local sheriff (a terrific performance by Dwight Yoakam) tries to ignore the crime. But Melquiades’ friend, Pete Perkins (Tommy Lee Jones), won’t let the issue go.
Along with finding the killer, Pete is determined to haul the corpse back down to Mexico. And this journey forms the last half of the picture – and the closest thing to a Sam Peckinpah movie since the director of “The Wild Bunch” died.
It’s so right that Arriaga’s script was picked up by Tommy Lee Jones, who brings the aura of “Lonesome Dove” and leathery Texan masculinity to his performance. The combination of the tough-guy face and the emotional directness (Jones’ voice goes high-pitched, like a coyote yowl, when he gets choked up) works perfectly.
As director, Jones balances the Old West code with modern ironies, like that cell phone. With his ace cinematographer Chris Menges, he gets the sweeping landscapes of a Western, but there’s a plainness and a reality to these locations, too.
The performances are good, especially the supporting work of Yoakam, Melissa Leo (as a been-around waitress) and January Jones (as Mike’s uncertain wife). Levon Helm has a memorable little part as a blind man who might have stepped out of a Greek myth.
Arriaga’s script glances across the issue of Mexican immigration without making it the point of the movie. There’s a rich vein of Roman Catholicism, too – not overtly, but in the film’s concern with sin and confessions and wounds. Melquiades Estrada’s body rots as it is carried down to Mexico, but Pete tries to preserve it, like a holy relic.
“Three Burials” was released in December in New York and Los Angeles in hope of Oscar nominations, but it got skunked (the script and Jones’ performance won awards at the Cannes Film Festival last year). Too bad for the Academy; they missed a good one.
Tommy Lee Jones directed and stars in “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.”
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