The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada Directed by Tommy Lee Jones (Sony Pictures Classics, 2005)

The Western that didn't make it to the Oscars this year was also a laconic tale about the bond between two cow-pokes, but the borders Melquiades Estrada (Julio Cedillo) and his friend Pete Perkins (Tommy Lee Jones) cross illicitly are ethnic and national, rather than sexual. Actor/ director Jones and writer Guillermo Arriaga have cooked up a Tex-Mex parable that is part Cormac McCarthy (The Crossing), part John Sayles (Lone Star), and more than a smattering of John Ford, John Huston, and Sam Peckinpah.

Arriaga, who favors Quentin Tarantino-esque tales that double back to bite you in the keester, lays out his story in both the past and present tense. One trail follows the amiable and unlikely friendship of cattle foreman Perkins and his illegal ranch hand Estrada, while the other picks up Perkins' tracks as he sets out to avenge his buddy's wrongful death.

When buzzards dig up Estrada's murdered body in a shallow grave, the local sheriff (Dwight Yoakam) has little interest in uncovering the killer of another illegal, and Estrada is soon reinterred. But Perkins, who has promised to return his friend's body to the family plot in Mexico, is determined to get to the bottom of things. So he kidnaps Estrada's killer, digs up his buddy's corpse, and sets off on a pilgrimage of atonement across a hardscrabble landscape dotted with craggy deserts and sunburned border towns where folks swing between boredom and brutality.

More than a simple tale of Western vengeance, Arriaga and Jones' high-plains parable offers a number of nice twists and introduces us to some memorable characters, while the journey into the wilderness provides a couple of opportunities for a punishment that fits the crime--offering the possibility of repentance and redemption. Tommy Lee Jones may be more locust than honey, but he's a voice crying in the desert that we won't soon forget.