Release Date: February 3, 2006

(out of 4)

Personally, I feel that virtually no westerns made were ever really any good until the mid-1960's when directors Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah came onto the horizon. Of the old-time picks, Howard Hawk's Red River with John Wayne from 1948 is an exception. So if you're like me, and you haven't the foggiest idea why such outmoded westerns like "The Searchers," "The Quiet Man" and "Stagecoach" are considered amongst the greatest movies ever made, then you might be able to have some honest appreciation of Tommy Lee Jones' new modern western "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada." It's got more grit, more depth and more soul than any of those insanely overrated westerns. I'd select Jones' film as one of the all-time great films before I'd ever bat an eye again at " The Searchers," that exploration of prairie wars that is toppled in the second half by out-of-place farce and domestic hokey-ness.

"Melquiades Estrada" came out for a one-week limited run in December to qualify for the Oscar race, but the media spotlight was stolen by other more high-profile films. Jones is not a media darling, he doesn't even like to participate in interviews unless it is mandatory by contract or if the journalist meets his high standards. Jones does not seek out false accolades, so I'll volunteer my own: Jones' new film is the greatest movie to ever be directed by a veteran actor. Move over Robert Redford, Charles Laughton and Kevin Costner.

The film begins on a slightly grisly discovery. At a border town in Texas, a coyote is feasting on a corpse that was pulled out of his grave. The name of the dead body was Melquiades Estrada who was evidently shot and then incompetently buried. There is no police investigation into the dead man's murder because the victim was an illegal immigrant. Jones, who did win Best Actor at last year's Cannes Film Festival (the screenplay won an award, too) plays ranch foreman Pete Perkins, who sets out to avenge the border patrolman responsible for shooting his fellow ranch-hand and best friend.

This modern-day western feels like the work of a revived Sam Peckinpah – particularly the '70's gem "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia." The dark humor, the wicked eruptive violence, the bizarre macabre of sudden incidents, the sociological insights into small town life – everything combines together to create for one mesmerizing story as well as a mesmerizing homage to late '60's cinema.

But Jones however never feels like he is in a rush to get onto the main A-story. He has a mature affinity for creating a number of streamlining B-stories that will somehow catalyst the A-story where Jones kidnaps the remorseless patrolman. Barry Pepper ("Saving Private Ryan"), as Mike Norton, is a young kid from Cincinnati who brings unapologetic sadism to his job as a patrolman – so loathing of illegal aliens, he punches one woman in the nose and breaks it. Norton has no mercy or understanding of the immigrants sneaking into the U.S. from the mountainous terrain of North Chihuahua, and, alas, it takes several days of punishment from Pete before he starts changing his tune.

Working with "Amores Perros" and "21 Grams" screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, Jones constructs a jagged and non-linear narrative to look at how past events have subtly influenced the present. Chapter headings are used as informative tools (“First Burial,” etc.), and scenes that reveal character and motivation are prescient to later scenes of plot direction. Jones as a filmmaker always seems to consciously know what and what is not relevant, or at least what is beguiling to the viewer in the best sense of the word. The first one-third of the film recalls Peter Bogdanovich's "The Last Picture Show," with its sleepy portrayal of small-town Texas. To kill boredom, everyone seems to engage in rampant infidelity. Life seems to be made up of work and extramarital affairs. There's hardly a character here that doesn't have at least two lovers.

Pete has three consistent lovers (maybe more we don't know about.) Dwight Yoakam as Sheriff Frank Belmont has affairs on the side. Rachel (Melissa Leo) is a coffee house waitress who cheats on her husband with both Pete and Sheriff Belmont. January Jones, as Mike Norton's wife Lou Ann, has a couple of affairs on the side. The only person around that seems to have only one partner is Mike Norton himself, a tightly wired and unsympathetic human being that is coldly unaware of how unhappy his wife is and coldly unaware of just about anything else that resembles human feeling. Julio Cesar Cedillo plays the living Melquiades Estrada, a shy hombre that nearly goes to bed with Lou Ann a short period of time before he was mortally shot. With this backwards and forwards timeline, the audience sometimes knows more about the full story than the characters actually do.

Pete has no one to avenge for Melquiades ' death until, with luck, a smart lead points to Mike Norton as the culprit. Pete violently rams into the Norton house one night, ties up wife Lou Ann and kidnaps Mike and forces him to participate in an odyssey. Pete has Mike dig his Mexican friend out of his grave, and by horseback, forces him to journey into backcountry Mexico to re-bury his best friend in his old native town. Melquiades ' rotting corpse becomes an obstacle during the journey, but anti-freeze does some of the trick in preserving the body.

The ride into Mexico is made up of odd encounters and brutal absurdity, by way of "Pulp Fiction" or "Fargo" it finds the dark humor in violent and ghastly situations. The U.S. border cops, assisted by Sheriff Belmont, chase Pete as far as they can go without infiltrating Mexico. Sometimes the diversions from the main plot create for some of the movie's great scenes: A blind old man helps the two of them along their way and then begs them for a mercy killing because he is old and helpless. A setback that creates for great situational drama: A snake-bite in Mike's foot curtails the journey and nearly sends the two of them back to the U.S. side where their journey began. All the while Mike, petrified of Pete's staunch dedication in this rude odyssey, sees the pilgrimage as a road to death rather than as a road to repentance.

In light of surviving several harrowing episodes that involve Mike to withstand excruciating pain, either accidentally or deliberately inflicted, he is able to change his tune to the understanding that the journey is an essential sacrifice. He realizes that he must find a way to take responsibility for Melquiades ' death. Instead of trying to escape the pain anymore he becomes ready to accept the pain, because volunteering for it is the only way he is going to attain salvation. Pete makes his sacrifices, too, which is the haunting beauty of the movie. He's the cowboy riding off into the sunset, except that usually makes for a happy ending but here makes for a sad, elegiac, yet profoundly moving ending. This is the best film I saw in all of 2005, even though it isn't until now that the movie-loving public can see for themselves. As for Peckinpah , the director of such masterworks as "Straw Dogs" and "The Wild Bunch," if he had directed this movie, he would have certainly considered it as one of his very best.