The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (Tommy Lee Jones, 2005)
Imdb
Date Watched: 01/30/2020
Cinema or Home: Home
Reason For Watching: MoFo Top 100 Westerns Countdown, recommended by @cricket
Rewatch: No.
I had some trouble engaging with this film. It's a good looking movie and features very good performances, but its populated with characters that aren't especially likable but I wouldn't call totally despicable either and, honestly, I didn't find them all that interesting... at first.
Once Pete (Tommy Lee Jones) enacted his plan to punish his friend's killer, things got real interesting. I really enjoyed the power dynamic between Pete and his captive. I also thought Barry Pepper did a fine job of showing the gradual breakdown of Norton's arrogance and selfishness and that final scene of him begging for forgiveness was really powerful.
That said, there were some things that I wasn't too keen on. Well, really, there were a couple of characters I wasn't too keen on: the patrolman's wife, Lou Ann, and Rachel, the married waitress who was carrying on affairs with both Pete and the town's sheriff. January Jones and Melissa Leo both did fine jobs with their performances, but too much time was spent with them and some of their scenes just felt like filler.
That is pretty insignificant gripe, however and I thought this was a very solid film overall. I didn't love it, but I do think there's a good chance that I'll like it more if I watch it again. It's unlikely that I'll get back around to it before the voting deadline, but it may still sneak its way onto my ballot.
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