by Robert Alstead

I've never been to Texas, but it can't be much less inviting than the border town in The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. The directorial debut from Tommy Lee Jones, best known as the special agent from Men In Black, depicts life in small-town Texas as dumb, dusty and deadening, a transient place where people live in trailers and the primary diversion is casual adultery in motel rooms. This is the starting point for a strange journey, in which a gruff cowboy called Pete Perkins (Jones), honours a promise to a dead friend, by taking his body back to Mexico.
The film opens in the desert of West Texas with the discovery of the corpse being chewed on by a coyote. The story, written by Guillermo Arriaga (21 Grams, Ameros Perros), moves back and forth in time, showing the development of a strong bond between the grizzled foreman and the young Mexican Melquiades, who he takes on as a herd on his cattle ranch. Theirs is a friendship that bridges the divide caused by prejudice and racism.
Mike Norton (Barry Pepper), a rookie border patrolman, is a stark contrast to the gentle Melquiades. We see Mike break a young Mexican girl's nose when she runs away from him while chasing down "illegals" -- "You were way overboard there, boy," his superior tells him -- and he treats his miserable, bored wife (January Jones) like dirt. It is while he is masturbating among the desert scrub over a copy of Hustler that the patrolman responds to the sound of gunfire by mistakenly shooting the hapless Melquiades as he tends his goats. The episode was inspired by a real-life incident in 1997, when US marines shot Esequiel Hernandez Jr., an innocent 18-year-old Texan.
Enraged by the local sheriff's unwillingness to act on behalf of his friend's death, Pete takes matters into his own hands. He kidnaps the guilty patrolman and forces him, at gunpoint, to exhume the body. Captor and hostage then begin a quixotic journey across desert mountains, with the rotting body slung over a mule. For both men, the journey is an inward one as well, taking on a mythic quality, as Mike's past cruelties and callousness return to visit him.
Weirdness is not in short supply here, as the borders of acceptability are crossed. Moments of grotesque comedy -- whenever the decomposing stiff moves centre stage, for example -- are offset by elements of Dukes of Hazard type idiocy, as the cops in hot pursuit slip on banana skins. However, an undercurrent of melancholy suffuses the film, establishing a tone that seems eloquently enhanced by the stark, arid landscape. One scene, in particular, where the two men meet a blind hermit (played by drummer Levon Helm of The Band), who feeds the men and then makes a parting request, is haunting in its simplicity. It forces Pete to question just how far he is prepared to go. For the audience though, he probably crossed the mark long ago.
Tsotsi is a redemption tale told in the patois of South African townships. A violent, 19-year-old thug discovers a baby in the back seat of his stolen car, after having shot the mother. Instead of abandoning the bawling infant, he parcels it up in a brown paper bag and takes it back to his slum. As he responds to the infant's demands, memories of his cruel past come flooding back, and he finds his humanity and compassion slowly rekindled. The story could have come across as overly manipulative, but is deftly handled with slick cinematography.

Robert Alstead writes for www.iofilm.ca. He is currently making a cycling documentary entitled You Never Bike Alone (www.youneverbikealone.com) He writes for www.iofilm.ca