2/3/2006

in

Despite Ang Lee's success with a controversial film about cowboys, Tommy Lee Jone's "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" is less controversial and more just plain weird, dragging at times without reward as if it were a trek through the Nevajo desert.

David Pepose

Despite Ang Lee's success with a controversial film about cowboys, Tommy Lee Jone's "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" is less controversial and more just plain weird, dragging at times without reward as if it were a trek through the Nevajo desert. Jones, in some sort of weird last wish, exhumes his friend's corpse and decides to rebury it in Mexico, along with the border patrolman who was indirectly responsible for the friend's death. Thus begins a surreal journey between two men, a corpse, and a long road on the sweltering desert. Although Jones tried his hardest to come up with an "original" idea for his screenplay, the reasoning, the pace, and the motivation behind his actors is indeed like the fallen friend which his script has preserved with anti-freeze: stiff.