WESTERN ODYSSEY TOMMY LEE JONES TAKES ON BORDER ISSUES IN 'THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

It's an award-winning film about a close relationship between modern-day cowboys that leads to some mighty unsettling - some would even say controversial - behavior.

The movie is ``The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.'' And while it bears some similarities to Oscar-season darling ``Brokeback Mountain,'' this wayward Western saga has an entirely different agenda on its ruggedly individual, sun-baked mind.

Directed by and starring Academy Award-winning actor Tommy Lee Jones (``The Fugitive''), it's about a lonely Texas ranch hand who seeks a bizarre kind of justice when his best compadre, the undocumented vaquero of the film's title, is accidentally shot to death. Jones' Pete Perkins decides to dig up the body and rebury it in the remote Mexican village Estrada came from. He also lassoes Mike Norton (Barry Pepper), the young border patrolman responsible for his friend's death, and forces him to ride along into an increasingly surreal, cross-border odyssey.

Weird as it may get, the story is a natural for native Texan and ranch-owner Jones. In fact, he dreamed it up and co-wrote it with the soulful Mexican writer Guillermo Arriaga, who's best-known for his work with director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (``Amores Perros,'' ``21 Grams''). Jones' previous directing effort, the 1995 television movie ``The Good Old Boys,'' was about rodeo riders.

Why so long between helming projects? Well, the 59-year-old actor points out, it ain't exactly his day job.

``Directing jobs are awfully hard to get - and original material is hard to find,'' says Ivy Leaguer Jones, who often seems to be explaining the obvious while setting up a unique, sometimes oblique observation. ``There are people who direct movies for a living and wait a long time between jobs. But the main thing is finding the right material - and then having enough time.''

Shoot first, write later

Jones and Arriaga came up with the idea for ``Three Burials'' during one of the deer hunts the actor used to stage on one of his Texas spreads. The story grew into a metaphorical commentary on the issue of illegal immigration along the U.S.-Mexico border.

``Arriaga and I started talking about the kind of movie we'd want to make,'' Jones recalls. ``He is interested in making movies about his country and its history, and I'm interested in making movies about my country and its history. And you don't really spend much time along the Rio Grande River without realizing that, in a lot of ways, the two countries are the same. That was, more or less, the taking-off point. I had some ideas about construction and points of view. And off we went.''

Almost as famous for being Al Gore's Harvard roommate as he is for starring in ``Men in Black,'' ``Coal Miner's Daughter'' and such landmark miniseries as ``Lonesome Dove'' and ``The Executioner's Song,'' Jones very much wanted the movie to reflect his antipathy toward such politicians as his home state Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Republican who supports vigilante border patrols and other measures to limit the flow of undocumented aliens from the south.

``It seems very easy to say, 'It's your problem, not mine,' whatever side of the river you stand on,'' Jones observes. ``And there are people, country people who work in agriculture, whose families are split by this international border and who are ready, willing and able to do hard work, who need jobs and can do the world some good. They are not crossing the river to blow up our office buildings, sell us drugs, take away our jobs and bloat our school system. And they're important people. A humanist point of view on the river is important, I think.

``In 'The Three Burials,' I wanted to portray Mexicans and Texans as human beings with pains, with emotions,'' Arriaga adds. ``Not only cartoons, you know? It's easy to make cartoons about Mexicans, it's easy to make cartoons about Texans. I wanted them to feel authentic and make people in Texas and Mexico feel good about themselves.''

Or as good as a movie about pathological relationships, violently enforced ethical lessons and a rotting corpse preserved with antifreeze can make people feel, anyway.

Under the influences

``I was certainly aiming for originality; we don't have any other motivation,'' insists Jones, whose film has been compared to the poetically bloody Westerns of ``Wild Bunch'' director Sam Peckinpah.

``We worked hard to come up with an original screenplay and movie. Of course, there are influences. You might call them references or an homage or, more honestly, theft, from Akira Kurosawa. I do admire Sam Peckinpah's films, not for the usual reasons of blood and violence and male camaraderie, but for his use of color and rhythm. And this movie was certainly influenced by Jean-Luc Godard of France and the Kabuki theater of Japan. And the writing - and thinking - of Flannery O'Connor. And just about everything else I've seen or heard - if you add in all the people that I've known.''

That list includes some 60 fictional characters Jones has played since making his acting debut in the 1970 ``Love Story,'' which was based on the best-selling novel by another Harvard acquaintance, Erich Segal. Jones says that playing Pete Perkins while directing his first feature was, rather than extra demanding, one of the easier acting jobs he's taken.

``Whether I help write it or direct it or not, I try to understand every screenplay as well as I can and try to figure out what the director wants to see and do my best to make it easy for him to see it,'' the consummate actor explains. ``But I'm smarter than most of the directors I work for and, also, I can read my own mind. So this was a little bit easier.

``I was being facetious,'' Jones adds later. ``I knew the role very well before shooting, because I had spent two years creating it with Arriaga. You know, sometimes actors get two weeks to prepare a role, sometimes a month. It was a real advantage for me to have two years.''

It seems to have paid off, at least in some judges' minds. Although ``Three Burials'' played a one-week Academy Awards-qualifying run in L.A. last December that turned out to be fruitless, it earlier won Jones the best actor prize at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.

Muddy waters run deep

But shooting the movie proved as difficult as appearing in it was easy. Filmed in Northern Mexico and on his own property, the low-budget, French-financed production suffered every desert hardship a film can encounter.

The hard-bitten director was entirely in his element.

``The toughest things are the terrain and the weather,'' Jones explains. ``The Northern Chihuahua desert is a very delicate environment. On the other hand, everything out there will stab you or sting you or bite you or kick you. The fact is that, if you don't respect that country, it will hurt you.

``So we had to do a lot of work very quickly with that in mind. in other words, this was not a studio production with lavish craft services. And the weather can be violent.

``The night before the last day of shooting, nine inches of rain fell on the location. I couldn't get the trucks out of the parking lot to negotiate the 35 miles of dirt road we needed to travel to get to where we were filming. Which was OK because there were rocks the size of Volkswagens sitting in the middle of the road, and the road was sitting two to three feet deep in mud. The reason why it was OK was because if we had gotten to the location, we would have all died; the river had risen nine feet overnight and was moving south at 20 knots.

``Those are difficult shooting situations.''

With all he put into ``Three Burials,'' does Jones have an urgent need to get back in the director's saddle?

``I don't think anything's urgent,'' he says, shrugging. ``But I would very much like to work again as a director very soon.''

Only, though, if he can come across something as unusual as ``The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.'' Even as his movie and others are changing how we've always thought about the Western genre, Jones sounds determined to ride much further out there.

``What's a genre?'' he asks rhetorically. ``I'd like to explore a movie that actually defies the term 'genre' and even obviates the necessity to use it.''

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) A NEW DIRECTION

Why Tommy Lee Jones was determined to make a different kind of Western

Getty Images

(2) Tommy Lee Jones, right, and Barry Pepper star in ``The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada,'' Jones' directing debut. The film, set in Texas and Mexico, reflects Jones' thoughts on illegal immigration and the rights of people living on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.

(3) - Tommy Lee Jones on flow of undocumented workers across the U.S. border