The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (also known as Three Burials) is a 2005 neo-Western film directed by and starring Tommy Lee Jones and written by Guillermo Arriaga. It also stars Barry Pepper, Julio Cedillo, Dwight Yoakam, and January Jones. The film was inspired by the real-life killing in Texas of a teenager, Esequiel Hernandez Jr, by United States Marines during a military operation near the United States–Mexico border as well as the novel As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, which contains the same plot premise and challenges encountered in the film. The film has many flashbacks and sometimes the same event is shown from different perspectives. Plot Melquiades Estrada, a Mexican undocumented worker working in Texas as a cowboy, shoots at a coyote which is menacing his small flock of goats. A nearby United States Border Patrol officer, Norton, thinks he is being attacked and shoots back, killing Melquiades. Norton quickly buries Melquiades and does not report anything. Melquiades' body is found and is reburied in a local cemetery by the sheriff's office. Evidence that he may have been killed by Border Patrol is ignored by the local sheriff, Belmont, who would prefer to avoid trouble with the Border Patrol.