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. It took Jones a while -- he's pushing sixty -- to get behind the camera, but he fills every frame of his debut with the ferocity and feeling of his best screen performances. Add his role as Texas ranch foreman Pete Perkins to that gallery. Jones took the…

Tommy Lee Jones' stirring and deeply felt Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada proves one thing: Sometimes the most compelling films are the ones closest to the heart.

Story

Three Burials is languid simplicity at its best. The story starts off as a murder mystery of sorts when a Mexican man, Melquiades Estrada, is found shot dead outside a dusty Texas town, near the U.S./Mexican border. Without any family, he's written off and unceremoniously buried in a shallow grave. This is not at all…