The Three Burials of Melquiádes Estrada, directed by Tommy Lee Jones, proves that the director’s knowledge of Spanish is quite adequate, and his accent is what one would expect from someone who associates with working class Mexicans and hails from West Texas. The titles “First Burial,” “Second Burial,” and “Third Burial” summarize the most the most important events of the film, which often are repeated in flashbacks, but the title “The Trip” before the “Third Burial” is the most gruesome. Pete Perkins (played by Jones) is a cattle ranch foreman in Van Horn, West Texas. Perkins’s best friend is Melquiádes Estrada (played by Julio César Cedillo), a Mexican vaquero who is doubtless an illegal alien. Estrada, who has been away from México for many years, has asked Perkins in the event of his death to locate his wife so that he can be buried in Jiménez, his hometown. One day, Estrada is found dead by Border Patrol officers. Mike Norton (played by Barry Pepper), the newest Border Patrol officer who most recently lived in Cincinnati, has brought along his spouse Lou Ann (played by January Jones), who relieves her boredom by schmoozing in a café with Rachel (Melissa Leo), the waitress whose husband is the chef, and by sleeping with other men. However, Estrada refuses to do so when Perkins buys Lou Ann’s services while he enjoys Rachel at a cheap motel; later, when her husband disappears, she returns to Cincinnati. The key event is that sheepherder Estrada one day shoots at a coyote who is threatening his herd. At the same time, Perkins is on patrol; hearing a gunshot, he ducks down, returns fire, and discovers to his horror that he has shot Estrada. Rather than confessing to the accident, he leaves shell casings as clues that enable Perkins to identify that Norton is the culprit. When Border Patrol officer Captain Frank Belmont (played by Dwight Yoakam), another of Rachel’s sexual customers, refuses to apprehend Norton, presumably because he believes that a good Mexican is a dead Mexican, Perkins becomes so enraged that he goes to Norton’s residence, handcuffs him at gunpoint, orders him to dig up the dead body, and then forces him to go on horseback to Estrada’s hometown, somewhere in the state of Chihuahua, to give Estrada a decent burial. Strangely, Perkins does not protest that the death was an accident until much later, when both are inside México and he sees the error of his ways far more clearly. The road trip is through sometimes barren desert, where Mexicans escape across the border to the United States, other Mexicans are quite helpful, and a blind American hermit (played by Levon Helm) offers assistance. Perkins is a man of few words and of such deep emotions that he makes a ridiculous marriage proposal to Rachel while drunk in a Mexican bar during the trek. He is so obsessed with his self-appointed task that filmviewers will find little sympathy for him in light of his brutal treatment of the much more sympathetic Norton along the road. MH