Watch The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada For Free

Let's be realistic.

A different way of telling a story

The acting in this movie is really good.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

This movie was pretty disappointing on every level. I love a good western, a good mystery and/or an interesting exploration of moral questions, but this movie was none of those things. Lots could be said about the film's stereotypes, its plodding pace, its rambling storyline, and other flaws.My #1 criticism, though, is that I couldn't understand a word Tommy Lee Jones said (or mumbled). He won Best Actor at Cannes, but I think he should have made the Guinness Book of World Records for Most Gruff Gruffness. I kept wishing that the subtitles they used for Spanish dialogue in this film would keep running when he was speaking.I'm not angry and don't entirely regret watching it, but I would not recommend it to a friend.

On the technical side of things this is an excellent film. I can find almost no flaws in its execution. The directing works, the scenes flow very well from one to another (though I don't really care for the flash-forwards, but that's a personal bias) and the acting is top-notch. Add in some gorgeous scenery, nice cinematography and a decent score and there's really nothing much to complain about.So that leaves us with the story, the style and the characters. I don't mind the story. It's actually a rather good tale about a sour man that doesn't really care about much anything, but has grown attached to his protégé and wants to do something decent for a while, even if that something is just giving the young man a proper burial place. I'll buy it and I was actually somewhat interested in the premise. Unfortunately the style and the characters are all very unpleasant to witness. This is a depressing movie. That's not exactly a flaw, as it is a conscious choice made by the makers of this movie, but it didn't improve the viewing experience for me. And the movie actually gets a lot better when we get out of that little American border town where everyone is ugly, sinful and has given up all hope. Sure people are ugly and sinful on the other side of the border as well, but at least they have an explanation for their misery. In that American town there's just this feeling of clinical masochism. Like they're miserable by choice. And perhaps that's the statement that the film makers wanted to convey. If so, they certainly succeeded.And, to the film's credit, there are some good characters as well. Tom Lee Jones' Pete Perkins has given up hope like so many others in this film, but there's still that small sliver of principle in him, shining through the cracks. Likewise with the titular character Melquiades Estrada, the only character that feels alive in this film, even though it is about his burial. Wrap your head around that fact.All in all I wouldn't necessarily recommend this to anyone. It's a well-made movie about hopelessness, frustration and meaningless good deeds, but it's also so very ugly that I kind of wish I hadn't seen it. On the other hand I recognize that my personal taste in movies is the only thing that's preventing me from singing its praises. So if gritty realism is your thing, this movie could be for you.

I like Tommy Lee Jones, so I thought I'd take this one out from the local library. It sounded good from the description on the cover, but I have to say I was very disappointed. It is a movie about nothing, really. Jones plays a demented old cowboy who seeks to avenge the accidental death of his new-found friend at the hands of a Border Patrol agent, played by Barry Pepper. He gives a terrific performance as the soulless trailer-trash agent who finds a soul before the end of the picture.In the meanwhile, though, director Jones treats us to a meandering, tedious story which is sorely in need of some action and an element of tension. I found the numerous flashbacks were misleading and confusing, and this in a story which was barely holding my interest.Those of you who found it artful and meaningful, more power to you. I thought the best things about the film were the aforementioned Pepper and the camera work on the Mexican countryside. This picture can't hold a candle to "No Country For Old Men".

"The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" stars Tommy Lee Jones as Pete Perkins, a rancher stricken by grief when Mel, a close friend and Mexican employee, is killed by a trigger happy border patrol guard. Enraged by the local police force's indifference toward Mel's death, Perkins sets out to fulfil a promise by taking Mel's corpse home to Mexico. He takes Mel's murderer – a deranged border patrolman played by Barry Pepper – with him.The film was written by Guillermo Arriaga ("Amores Perros", "21 Grams"), a writer with a fondness for non-chronological plot-lines. As a result "Burial" is initially off-putting, until its various narrative strands begin to gel and Arriaga's plot becomes cohesive.Like John Sayles' superior "Lone Star", the film is a racial tract dressed up in cowboy garb: an allegory about affluent bullies who exploit their Third World neighbours whilst covering up the misdirected violence of their own hotheaded proletariat. The film works best, though, not as a message movie, but as an evocation of small town West Texas. This is a dead, forgotten world, where emasculated men bully both women and immigrants just to feel alive. The film's title refers to the repeated burials and excavations of Mel's corpse. There are many ways to bury a man, the film says, but only one is right."Burial's" cast is mostly fine, expect Pepper, whose character is written as a raging, caricatural hot head. Not only is his narrative arc clichéd – he moves from resentment to forgiveness, and so redemption, after witnessing the hard lives of Mexicans first hand – but his character demonizes and personalises what are ideological, political and structural problems. Lazy, aggressive, violent, sexual perverts patrol the Mexican borders, the film wants you to believe. Look how they bully poor, nice, kind-hearted Mexicans! Which is not to say that the violence of such men does not spring from feelings of emasculation, but that the issue is infinitely more complicated. For example, just 44 percent of the border is actually patrolled, and what is patrolled is mostly a charade, as there is an unspoken understanding that the US economy is heavily reliant on cheap labour provided by immigrant workers. As much as 1/6th the population of Mexico lives and works in the United States, most of it under conditions of illegality, with little protection from the exploitation of low-wage employers. This, of course, is all engineered to keep the cost of goods low (Wal-Mart routinely makes almost 300 billion in annual sales, 11 million of which goes toward paying reprimands for hiring illegal immigrants) and to prevent the problems and violence of the borders travelling inland and engulfing the white lower and middle classes. A somewhat unconscious decision is thus made: better ticked off, poor Mexicans over the border, than ticked off whites at home. The border is less a cartographic demarcation than an instrument of social and class relations.If Pepper is a caricature who distracts away from the core of real issues, Jones fares better. His grief is palatable, though because his relationship with Mel isn't fully explored, his sorrow isn't as affecting as it should be. Interestingly, the film reduces Jones and Mel's friendship to bouts of shared sex with hookers. In an emasculated town, where everyone plays games of dominance/submissiveness, the hetero-couple's companionship boils down to a willingness to copulate in tandem. To get around the contradiction of these "good" men hiring hookers, the prostitutes are portrayed as "hookers with hearts of gold", their male clients totally submissive to the women's needs and wishes.Mixing noir tropes with that of Westerns and Southern Gothic literature, "Burials" belongs firmly to the "Mexican-American border neo noir", or "Tex-noir" hybrid genre. Some of the sub-genre's better film include "Extreme Prejudice", "Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia", "No Country For Old Men", "Flesh and Bone", "Lone Star", "Lonely are the Brave", and "The Border".7.9/10 - Worth one viewing.