The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada marks the directorial debut of Tommy Lee Jones - one of Hollywood's inexorably irascible forces and if the film reflects Jones' hard-scrabble, barbwire personae, so does it reveal the ghostly presence of Sam Peckinpah. His spirit infuses not only the scope and style of the film but it's offbeat humor and it's inspired absurdity. Co-written with Amores Perros scribe Guillermo Arriaga Three Burials garnered Jones best writing and acting accolades at last years Cannes Film Festival.

Jones plays Pete Perkins, a hard drinking Texan who works as a ranch foreman for a small cattle operation near the U.S/Mexico border. He hires and develops a friendship with the titular illegal alien (Julio Cesar Cedillo) who becomes romantically involved with a dangerous woman. Much like the legendary Peckinpah, Jones creates a setting where bullets whiz through the air with comic regularity, law and morality are subject to interpretation, life is, at best, a precarious commodity and loyalty and redemption are valued above all else. Barry Pepper (The Green Mile, Saving Private Ryan) turns in a wire-taut performance as Border Patrolman Mike Norton - a brash, newcomer of a clumsy cowboy with a marked tendency to rub people the wrong way. He is married to the tempestuous beauty Lou Ann (January Jones) but his difficulty in relating to her as a husband and lover leaves her a lonely frustrated tinderbox. As the title suggests senor Estrada is not long for this world and his ill-advised dalliance with Mike's wife soon results in one of those wayward bullets making a stop in the vicinity of his more vital internal organs. To conceal his crime, Mike does a sloppy job of burying Melquiades - a fact that a band of coyotes soon make known to Jones as well as the local Sheriff.

Understandably upset by the state of affairs and the rather disrespectful manner in which his friend's body was interred, Pete Perkins first seeks redress from the local sheriff Belmont - played with an off-beat comic flair by Dwight Yoakum. Belmont is more inclined to let the matter lie, rather than stir up more headaches for himself and proceeds to sweep the unfortunate accident aside. Thus Perkins has no choice but to take matters into his own hands. The first order of business is to kidnap Pepper dress him up in the dead man's clothes and set out on a journey to bury Estrada in his hometown - in accordance with his wishes. During the trek to Mexico Jones and Pepper's characters develop something of an understanding as well as closure in the films somewhat spiritual ending. Unlike a typical western, with the attendant macho grandstanding along with high body counts, Jones offers a pared down morality play where a simple man of honor wishes only for others to understand and value the life of one man - illegal immigration issues aside.

If I have a gripe with the picture it's that it unfairly paints border patrol personnel in an unflattering light - the truth is the vast majority of such men see to the safety and well-being, and go out of their way to insure that border crossing aliens are not unjustly harmed or left to die from exposure to the elements. Those issues aside, Jones gritty and heartfelt portrait of a Texas town full of characters who run the gamut of human foibles and frailties is indeed a fascinating and laudable debut. The many characters Jones and Pepper encounter on their journey are particularly well-drawn and represent in allegorical form a good cross-section of that society. Most memorable is a blind man played by Band Drummer Levon Helm. Overall, the film runs a bit long and certainly owes it's debts to Peckinpah's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia with it's corpse carrying theme as well as The Ballad of Cable Hoague with it's small town portraits and prostitute character. The film also demonstrates Jones' resourceful use of anti-freeze.