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Poster for The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

Nobody is beyond redemption.

2005 · 2h 1m · R Adventure, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Western
Directed by Tommy Lee Jones

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Overview

When brash Texas border officer Mike Norton wrongfully kills and buries the friend and ranch hand of Pete Perkins, the latter is reminded of a promise he made to bury his friend, Melquiades Estrada, in his Mexican home town. He kidnaps Norton and exhumes Estrada's corpse, and the odd caravan sets out on horseback for Mexico.

Director and cast

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes

Top critics, in their words

All reviews
85%
Tomatometer
Fresh

This isn't a film that demands to be enjoyed in order to be remembered -- one way or the other, it will stick with you.

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail
Fresh

With all due respect to that important, quasi-controversial, most-honored film of last year, this is the best Western of 2005.

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel
Fresh

[A] long, kooky, immensely absorbing picture, which forges the elegiac cruelty of a Cormac McCarthy novel with the two-fisted machismo of a Sam Peckinpah movie, and comes up with an altogether new brand of Western mythology.

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald
Fresh

Funny, tough, filled with cut-to-the-bone moments and bleached in the heat of the Texas sun, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is a movie that sears itself into the viewer with uncompromising vision and stark approach.

Tom Long, Detroit News
Fresh

It boasts genuinely and uniformly fine performances -- a credit to Jones the director and the actor, as well as his costars -- some stunning cinematography by the great Chris Menges and a uncompromising script by [Guillermo] Arriaga.

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press

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