On the modern western "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada"

Why you should know this movie exists

By Chilltown Blues

In 2005 actor Tommy Lee Jones directed his second movie, “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada,” a modern western that’s among the most interesting things that’s been done with that genre without romanticizing its tropes.

In an interview, Jones recounted on being in a vehicle during a hunting trip somewhere around the Texas-Mexico border — Guillermo Arriaga, the film’s screenwriter was also on the trip — and realizing that there was a lot of talent in said vehicle, Jones thought out loud that they should make a film together.

“Three Burials …” is the result. Arriaga’s previous screenwriting credits include having written “Amores Perros” based on a story by himself and director Alejandro González Iñárritu, and that’s a movie with novel-like multi-narrative storytelling.

“Three Burials’…” similarly disjointed narrative doesn’t do its mainstream appeal any favors, but ultimately works well because the film’s threads are strong.

(Spoilers will now abound.)

The movie is about Pete Perkins (played by) Jones, who has befriended Melquiades Estrada (Julio Cesar Cedillo), a ranchhand he’s hired on, and his quest to see Estrada’s killer held accountable for his death along with seeing Estrada properly buried.

It takes nearly an hour for that quest to begin in earnest. The time before that is mostly absorbing, if a little slow. It shows a world of flawed people, with most of the several characters trying to self-medicate their way through humdrum lives with sex.

These include Mike Norton (Barry Pepper), especially, and Lou Ann Norton (January Jones), a 30-ish couple who’ve recently moved to a border-town because Norton has taken a job with the Border Patrol.

There’s a scene early on the film where Norton recklessly pursues migrants, tackling a man and punching a woman in the face. His commanding officer chastises him, but there’s no real consequences beyond that.

Estrada is tending to some goats when a coyote emerges, and he shoots a few warning shots at it, just as Norton, on patrol, has gotten out of his vehicle and looked for a secluded spot with his nudie magazine.

This film is based in part on a real incident that happened to Esequiel Hernandez, an 18-year-old U.S. citizen who in 1997 was killed by Clemente Banuelos, a 22-year-old Marine leading a borderland drug patrol where the main purpose of the mission, according to a report from Jezebel, was to observe.

The four-team Marines were heavily camouflaged in ghillie suits approximately 200 yards away, and according to the Marines’ investigation the four Marines said Esequiel, who had a World War I-era rifle he carried to fend off animals threatening the flock, fired twice in their direction.

Esequiel’s father reportedly said he only heard one shot altogether.

The shot that would eventually cause the death of Esequiel came after the Marines pursued him for 20 minutes, and Esequiel reportedly lay bleeding to death in a well he’d fallen into from the shot’s impact “with what looked like a broken neck,” according to one of the Marines,” before being pronounced dead hours later.

In “Three Burials …” Norton hears a gunshot while he’s using his nudie magazine. He then scrambles for his rifle and shoots twice in the direction the gunshot came from. Estrada is hit violently and quickly bleeding to death as Perkins, standing over him and taking in the sight of the goats and realizing what he’s done, drags him away and obscures the body.

Estrada’s body is found by hunters who shoot at one of the coyotes tearing at it. Despite evidence of foul play in Estrada’s death, the local sheriff pushes for a quick burial. Perkins, despondent with memories of conversations he and Estrada had about life and the place where Estrada wanted to be buried if he should die before Perkins, pushes for answers until a local waitress who has flings with both Perkins and the local sheriff tells him it was Norton.

Perkins kidnaps Norton, but not before telling Lou Ann why. He then has Norton dig up Estrada’s body as they head to cross the border with a few horses.

The duo encounter an elderly blind man who, unwilling to leave the only place he’s ever lived, asks them to shoot him. Perkins refuses, and Norton looks on, perplexed. It’s very possible that if he was in charge, he would; and he’s somewhere between considering something about Perkins and some spark of empathy for the plight of the elderly man — who essentially has no one else in the world.

Later on, when Perkins has dragged Norton over the border, Norton runs for it and hides in one of the mini-caves of a rock-bed. He’s promptly bitten by a snake. Perkins manages to get him and then a guide, with the promise of one horse as a payment, and the guide takes them somewhere Norton can receive medical care.

Who provides that care? The woman Norton punched in the face.

When he awakes the next morning, the woman spills hot coffee on him and hits him in the face with the coffee pot.

Soon thereafter, Norton wanders over as the woman and other members of her family are shucking corn. They hand him one, and it’s one of a few screenshots that almost make the movie worth watching just for how well they’re embodied. It features great acting on Pepper’s part, because you can see that he’s both perplexed and absorbing how someone showed him a basic level of kindness, in saving his life, after what he did to them.

As the movie nears its ending, it becomes fairly clear that Norton believes this journey will end in his death.

After the final subplot in which it’s clear that the place and people Estrada wanted to be buried by are half-dream, rather than reality, Perkins supervises as Norton digs and buries Estrada; then Perkins tells Norton to beg for Estrada’s forgiveness. Norton refuses, but after a few shots near his person, Norton precedes to very much beg for Estrada’s forgiveness.

He wakes up the next morning to Perkins telling him he can have a horse. As Perkins wanders off, Nortons looks at him and calls out earnestly, asking him if he is going to be okay.

In some ways, Norton’s entire life has been so hollow that the past week or so he’s spent in dire straits with people who do right by him in extreme circumstances, circumstances in which he would likely not have, is the most he’s ever really considered the world; or really lived.

It’s a loose, guiding principle for most of the characters in the story — who considers the world beyond the roles they’re married to and who doesn’t.

“The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada” is presently available to stream for free on the Roku Channel.

(Correction: Last reference to Perkins was corrected to Norton)

Blades

Actor Mahershala Ali has recently talked about the training he honed for what was supposed to be another comic book adaptation of “Blade,” about a dhampir vampire hunter, and using those skills for Bassam Tariq’s “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother,” premiering next month. Ali and Tariq, who had been hired on as director for that “Blade” adaptation, salvaged the disappointment of “Blade” not coming together with “Your Mother …” which looks like one of the more interesting action films coming out this year, to say the least.

With Ali playing a sword-toting hitman in the film, it’s standing alongside “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai,” a 1999 film shot mostly in less gentrified (but quieter) Chilltown in which Forest Whitaker plays a samurai/hitman. It’s on our list of the JC-area’s deeper screen cuts:

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