The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

Buy This Item The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada by Sony Pictures  Available from Amazon  $9.99  on 11-26-2008     Oscar® winner Tommy Lee Jones (Best Supporting Actor, <i>The Fugitive</i>, 1993) directs and stars in this poetic and striking modern-day Western. Peter Perkins (Jones) is a veteran cowboy who embodies the values of the old west, living in a small Texas town bordering the U.S. and Mexico. He hires Melquiades Estrada as a ranch hand and quickly befriends the man. But when Estrada is gunned down under mysterious circumstances, Perkins takes justice into his own hands and kidnaps a trigger-happy border patrolman (Barry Pepper - <i>Saving Private Ryan</i>), forcing Perkins to unearth Estrada's body and accompany Perkins on horseback on the long and treacherous journey through the frontier mountains and back roads of Mexico to bring his friend's body home. Reader Reviews I stumbled upon this movie and saw pieces of it until I became fixated by it and had to buy a copy for myself and to share. Tommy Lee Jones grew up in SanSaba Texas and his grand father had a construction company near the border. TLJ may or may not be a great actor and this role will not settle the argument because I swear he was not acting, if he is not a Texas cow hand, then all he did was copy the real people he has seen all his life. Most of the extras were not acting either, they were themselves, believe me I live there (here?). You have to pay attention as the story is told with a lot of flashbacks but it worked. There are several stories all being told and they are all to much like truth to be fiction. Only the title story would be fiction but it is still a real window into life on our frontier. Ya done good Tommy After posting my review I read the other reviews. It is interesting the different takes people have on it perhaps based on how far from here they live or their own prejudices and assumptions. Mike Norton is the only Border Patrol agent ( aka La Migra) who is such an evil person. It is not all whites are bad, all Mexicans good. It is not that we need a fence or a wall (ask the Russians, you build a wall and you still have to watch it). I do not see that illegal immigration is much of an issue here, the local authorities would not have cared any more if it had been a US hitch hiker. The blind old man gives TLJ a way of saying they do not want to offend God and lets one reflect on how your own life might end lonely or worse in a nursing home. Other reviewers can not imagine someone doing something like this for a friend. Those people would be out of place and easy to ID in a truck stop, a cowboy bar, a dirt floor cantena and probably a GI bar as well. Maybe I am not smart enough or educated enough to make a lot of the comparisons made by so many reviewers but it is a pretty simple story done with real people... Much like Glory Road and Friday Night Lights. I thought there were lots of funny parts and yes I did wonder about Pete telling LouAnn that Mike had killed Mel in Spanish. I also wonder about reviewers that do not know a goat from a sheep or a coyote from a Fox.

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada Available from Amazon Price: $9.99 Updated on 11-26-2008.

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