The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005)

Awards

Won 15 awards & 8 nominations
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Users' rating: 7.4

68 votes

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About the movie

Year

2005

Runtime

2 h 1 min

Genres

Adventure, Crime, Drama

Countries

United States, France

Director

Tommy Lee Jones

Writer

Guillermo Arriaga

Plotline

Ranch hand Pete Perkins looks to fulfill the promise to his recently deceased best friend by burying him in his hometown in Mexico.

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Starring

Tommy Lee Jones

Barry Pepper

Dwight Yoakam

January Jones

Melissa Leo

Main cast

Tommy Lee Jones Pete Perkins

Barry Pepper Mike Norton

Julio Cedillo Melquiades Estrada

Dwight Yoakam Belmont

January Jones Lou Ann Norton

Melissa Leo Rachel

Levon Helm Old Man with Radio

Mel Rodriguez Captain Gomez

Cecilia Suárez Rosa

Ignacio Guadalupe Lucio

Vanessa Bauche Mariana

Irineo Alvarez Manuel

Guillermo Arriaga Juan

Josh Berry Border Patrolman

Rodger Boyce Salesman

Edwin 'Bubba' Broussard Bubba

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External critics' reviews

In an era when hundreds of lives are casually destroyed in action movies, here is an entire film in which one life is honored, and one death is avenged. more

Wily, sad, funny, and full of life. more

Three Burials is beautiful, authentic and brutally observant of human nature. With real Tex-Mex backdrops instead of the usual Monument Valley vistas and characters too complex to withstand simple white-hat/black-hat reductionism, Three Burials is a visionary portrait of the New West. This is the terrain of Eastwood and Peckinpah, saddled with the concerns of 21st-century life. more

Grizzled Texan Tommy Lee Jones has made an exceptionally moving, surprisingly funny, often beautiful film, packed with unforgettable moments and note-perfect performances. more

Tommy Lee Jones steps behind the camera to direct himself in the most impressive directorial debut the American cinema has seen in some time, a contemporary western both rough and poetic, laconic and passionate. more

Making an altogether impressive big-screen directing debut, Jones exudes quiet control over this full-bodied Western, taking pleasure in his measured pacing, mixing somber authority with flashes of surrealist wit and luxuriating in the magnificent, vanishing vistas of his home state. more

Incisive yet supple, wrenching yet deeply pleasurable, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada easily ranks among the year's best pictures. more

All this edginess, combined with the grandeur and sweep of a classic western, demonstrates that Jones clearly knows how to tell a story -- and how to confound us at the same time. more

Outstandingly realized on all levels. more

There are complications, extremely cleverly worked out. Jones is in just about every scene in this taut, provocative film. more

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