The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: December 16, 2005 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
77
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 35 Critic Reviews
Positive:
27
Mixed:
6
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Los Angeles TimesKevin Thomas
Incisive yet supple, wrenching yet deeply pleasurable, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada easily ranks among the year's best pictures. Read full review
100
L.A. WeeklyScott Foundas
Making an altogether impressive big-screen directing debut, Jones exudes quiet control over this full-bodied Western, taking pleasure in his measured pacing, mixing somber authority with flashes of surrealist wit and luxuriating in the magnificent, vanishing vistas of his home state. Read full review
100
PremierePeter Debruge
Three Burials is beautiful, authentic and brutally observant of human nature. With real Tex-Mex backdrops instead of the usual Monument Valley vistas and characters too complex to withstand simple white-hat/black-hat reductionism, Three Burials is a visionary portrait of the New West. This is the terrain of Eastwood and Peckinpah, saddled with the concerns of 21st-century life. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
In an era when hundreds of lives are casually destroyed in action movies, here is an entire film in which one life is honored, and one death is avenged. Read full review
100
Seattle Post-IntelligencerSean Axmaker
Tommy Lee Jones steps behind the camera to direct himself in the most impressive directorial debut the American cinema has seen in some time, a contemporary western both rough and poetic, laconic and passionate. Read full review
100
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
All this edginess, combined with the grandeur and sweep of a classic western, demonstrates that Jones clearly knows how to tell a story -- and how to confound us at the same time. Read full review
100
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
Wily, sad, funny, and full of life. Read full review
100
EmpireRob Frazer
Grizzled Texan Tommy Lee Jones has made an exceptionally moving, surprisingly funny, often beautiful film, packed with unforgettable moments and note-perfect performances. Read full review
90
VarietyTodd McCarthy
Outstandingly realized on all levels. Read full review
90
Washington PostStephen Hunter
There are complications, extremely cleverly worked out. Jones is in just about every scene in this taut, provocative film. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
Don't let the near-impossible-to-remember title keep you away from this singular and slightly surreal Tommy Lee Jones scorcher. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Sam Peckinpah lives! The rampaging spirit of the late filmmaker, known as Bloody Sam for films such as "The Wild Bunch" and "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia," is all over this blistering modern Western from first-time director Tommy Lee Jones. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
Jones' film actually takes you somewhere you haven't visited in a million other movies. It has a wonderful sense of place, and space, and carries the bite and tang of a good short story. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy Burr
Tommy Lee Jones makes his feature directing debut here, and the film is as weathered, subtle, and sympathetic as the actor's own face. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
Jones displays a firm hand at the helm -- you sense that he is well within his comfort zone in this environment -- and performances including his own are lively and convincing. Read full review
80
The New York TimesManohla Dargis
In a film filled with plaintively expressive faces, characters say as much when they don't talk as when they speak Mr. Arriaga's dialogue, which sometimes sounds like hardscrabble poetry, sometimes sounds real as dirt and is, rather surprisingly, often darkly funny. Read full review
80
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
If The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada has some languid patches, it's also a work of uncommon maturity and remarkable poetry. Read full review
75
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
A small movie that plays like a Western epic. Read full review
75
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
Jones handles his fellow actors well, drawing a hard, anguished performance from Pepper and allowing January Jones (no relation) to bring a touching vulnerability to Mike's bored, vapid, baby-doll wife. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
If Jones were a more accomplished director, and if the relationship between Pete and his captive wasn't so schematic, this movie might have been worthy of Sam Peckinpah. Read full review
75
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
There are strange variations in the mood of Three Burials that may strike some viewers as flippant. As gritty and real as the business of toting a corpse at gunpoint gets, the tone occasionally veers into farce. But it's never too long before the focus returns to Jones' weathered eyes. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
What a strange and strangely compelling movie this is. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
Its social consciousness aside, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is really a simple love story between men set in the American West, although unlike "Brokeback Mountain," this love is purely platonic -- nothing more than the bond of brotherhood between two dear friends, a classic Western theme. Read full review
70
Village VoiceMichael Atkinson
Arriaga's script (a prize at Cannes) has a lovely, fascinating shape to it, even if his crushing portrayal of white Americans--all of them, even Jones, suffering from a zombified affect and crippling shortsightedness--is somewhat counterset against his Mexicans, who are all morally balanced, if not always happy or nice. Read full review
70
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
Jones directs with all the grit that's associated with his onscreen persona, but Peckinpah would never allow this degree of sentimentality to slip into one of his Westerns. A better comparison might be to Clint Eastwood, another tough-guy actor whose work as a director is often a little soft at the center. Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
I admired the leisure and intensity of this morality tale.
70
Dallas ObserverLuke Y. Thompson
Jones and Pepper are no Eastwood and Wallach, but the fact that one even thinks to make such a comparison speaks highly of the work here. Read full review
60
TimeRichard Schickel
The film comes uncomfortably close to risible. But it also achieves moments of real power. It's worth a wary look before it attains midnight cult-movie status. Read full review
60
The New YorkerAnthony Lane
The film's plea for old-fashioned pride and racial tolerance is muffled by a plain, unanticipated fact: Pete Perkins is out of his mind. Read full review
60
SlateStephen Metcalf
For a movie about the policing of borders, couldn't this one have policed a firmer one, between credibility and incredibility? Between seriousness and self-seriousness? Read full review
58
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
It lacks even Tarantino-esque vitality. It moves more like a busted concertina. Read full review
50
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
An unabashed descendant of "Bring Me the Head." This time, though, it's an entire corpse that gets hauled through the desert, and that's not all that's being toted. So is a hefty parcel of racial correctness. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
The film is dreadfully slow without much in the way of rewards. Read full review
38
New York PostKyle Smith
Oh no, another let's-drag-a-dead-body-to-Mexico flick? Read full review
38
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
Writer Guillermo Arriaga earns most of the blame. He played similar games with narrative in the vastly better "Amores Perros" and "21 Grams," jumping back and forth in time to show relationships among subplots and characters. But "Burials" barely has one plot. Read full review
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