Sergio's Fall Movie Countdown--#5

UNIVERSAL REMOTE

In a continuing series, Sergio reveals the ten films he is most looking forward to this fall.

5. The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada
directed by Tommy Lee Jones
opens 12/14

Like The New World, The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada is going to put a heavy emphasis on the natural environment in the telling of its story. It is a modern-day tale set in western Texas and northern Chihuahua, Mexico. Tommy Lee Jones plays Pete, a ranch foreman whose friend Melquiades (Julio Cesar Cedillo) is killed by a corrupt border patrolman named Mike (the always terrific Barry Pepper). Honoring his promise to bury his friend in Mexico in the event of his death, Pete forces Mike at gunpoint to disinter the body of Melquiades and deliver him to his hometown south of the Rio Grande. "I don't want to be buried among these billboards," Mel once told him. Thus begins a dangerous and quixotic journey into Mexico.

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada began when Tommy Lee Jones was on a Texas deer-hunting trip with the writer Guillermo Arriaga and the producer Michael Fitzgerald. "We said, hell, we got enough talent in the cab of this pickup truck to make us a movie," he said, "and that's when we started." The journey they began that day has so far been an artistic triumph.

Three Burials' script won the prize at Cannes for Best Screenplay. It is by Mexican writer Guillermo Arriaga, who also wrote Amores Perros and 21 Grams. If you've seen these films, you can be certain Three Burials will be a profoundly soulful piece, full of deep emotion and compassion. Redemption will be a major theme here. The movie is said to be similar in feeling to the writings of Cormac McCarthy (the brilliant All the Pretty Horses). It is set in the west and is populated with men who seem to come from an era that has passed by. They see the world in simple yet truthful terms, and when their code is violated, they take action in violent ways. Three Burials has been called "old-fashioned" by Roger Ebert, who raved about it at Cannes. He means that in the best possible way.

Tommy Lee Jones directs as well as stars. It always a little dangerous when a star directs himself. It often comes out indulgent or myth-making. (See Kevin Costner's The Postman.) But Jones has apparently delivered the goods here. He won Best Actor at Cannes and is a certain nominee for an Oscar. I've always been a big fan of Jones, especially Lonesome Dove, The Fugitive, and JFK. He has an uncanny ability to let the audience see him thinking. (A trait shared by my movie girlfriend, Rachel McAdams.) Lonesome Dove is one of my top three favorite movies of all-time. If this new western is half as good, we're all in for something very, very special.

TOMORROW: The story of a guy that shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.