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Rating: We are all orphans of Sam Peckinpah, but a great actor like Tommy Lee Jones must miss him even more. Making a film like "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" in 2005 means many things, a return to that contemporary western, an affirmation of justice not of institutions but of "moral" justice, a sort of journey of inner growth leading to the awareness that made us love a film like "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia". Fortunately, Tommy Lee will not suffer the same fate as Peckinpah, who was then branded by prudish critics as violent, reactionary, and ambiguous.
Walking the border between Texas and Mexico is no longer a severed head wrapped in a filthy cloth attacked by flies drawn by the stench; this time it's a whole body, that of the gentle Mexican illegal immigrant Melquiades Estrada, murdered like a dog by the young border patrol agent Mike Norton. Remembering the promise he made, it's his employer, the old rancher Pete Perkins, who exhumes the decaying body and takes it back to its hometown for an additional burial, forcing the killer to follow him on a painful journey to redemption.
The screenplay by Guillermo Arriaga, with its famous flashbacks (already the author of the excellent "Amores perros", "21 Grams", and "Babel" by Iñárritu) and the splendid cinematography by Chris Menges (Mission) give strength to Tommy Lee Jones' surprising direction. It is concise, never redundant, keeping the actors under control so as to prolong the effects of their facial expressions even more than necessary, embracing long shots as if to control even nature itself without ever imprisoning it.
While in "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia" the crucial point was the awareness of the miserable bar pianist Bennie, here it's about a young bastard border cop who beats immigrants, screws his bored young wife in two minutes, and masturbates over a copy of Hustler in the vast desert spaces he is to patrol. It will be the old Pete who mortifies him, torturing him physically and morally during the journey until the wonderful finale that redeems this time Peckinpah’s pessimistic vision.
And in this ruthless story, episodes soften the emotions we thought we had put to rest while watching this splendid film. For example, the scene of the decrepit blind man (played by Levon Helm, former drummer of the legendary group The Band) who hosts the two in his shack and asks them to do him a favor by shooting him because he is tired of living. And the scene of Pete drunk in the Mexican tavern (where among the many lights you expect to see the face of Warren Oates R.I.P. appear) calling his lover asking her to join him only to be refused; his disappointment and bitterness are an open book on the face of the great actor that is Tommy Lee Jones.
Another great performance is by Barry Pepper ("Saving Private Ryan", "25th Hour") with his little bastard expression so similar to the more famous one of Sean Penn and also the cameo of country singer Dwight Yoakam in the role of the detestable sheriff with erectile dysfunction issues.
Tommy Lee Jones makes good use of the lesson of the recent past (another reference is "Lone Star" by the independent John Sayles, also centered on a border story in a contemporary western) and leaves us with a film that is a new benchmark for those that will come. I am indeed waiting with a mix of impatience and suspicion for the adaptation that the Coen brothers have made of the novel "No Country for Old Men" by the great frontier writer Cormac McCarthy.
I hope for them and for us, but I doubt it, that they can do even better than "The Three Burials."
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