Chichester Cinema at New Park
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
Tommy Lee Jones film is a savage indictment of the relationship between USA and Mexico.
One of the most acclaimed films of 2005, ‘The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada’ marks the assured and worldly-wise directorial debut of veteran actor Tommy Lee Jones. Jones delivered this resonant, elegiac study of male friendship in a Western setting, crafting a flawless parable of borderline existence on the border of Texas and Mexico.
It is there, amidst some of the most beautifully bleak landscapes in recent American film, that Jones and screenwriter Guillermo Arriga (‘Amores Perros’, ‘21 Grams’) set their existential quest for meaning, focusing on the honour-bound commitment of Texas ranch foreman Pete (played by Jones with a heavy heart and deep moral conviction) to return the body of illegal Mexican immigrant ranch-hand Melquiades Estrada (played in flashback scenes by Julio Cedillo) to his preferred resting place in the Mexican wilderness. Estrada had been accidentally shot by Mike (Barry Pepper), a newly-arrived U.S. border patrolman, and Pete forces Mike to participate in his cross-country ritual of duty - a voyage of revenge and redemption that will change both men forever, and bring some semblance of meaning to the senseless death of Pete's good friend.
USA · 
Mexico · 2006 · Tommy Lee Jones · 122min
