Jones received the Best Actor award at Cannes, and the film’s screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga received the Best Screenplay award.
The movie is an account of ranch foreman Pete Perkins’ (Tommy Lee Jones) promise to his friend — a Mexican migrant named Melquiades Estrada (Julio Cesar Cedillo), who works for him at his West Texas ranch. Pete promises to bury Melquiades back in his native soil of Mexico if he dies in the United States.
“Three Burials” plays like two distinct films. The first involves Pete, Melquiades and Mike Norton, a violent border patrol agent (Barry Pepper). After Melquiades is gunned down and buried outside a Texas border town, Pete is dissatisfied with the official investigation and launches his own. He suspects Mike.
In film No. 2, Pete kidnaps Mike, and the two set off through the mountains and the desert with Melquiades’ decaying corpse. The trio embarks on a series of strange adventures and encounters. By the end of the film, none of the characters seem to be all good or all evil.
“Three Burials” is “the story of friendship that transcends borders created by policy, prejudice, wind, sun and sand. The vein of American pragmatism that runs through this journey is matched by a sense of the pastoral that finds beauty in every natural corner and a humanism that looks kindly on even the hardest face,” writes Manohla Dargis in The New York Times.
“Three Burials” runs Friday, April 28, through Sunday, April 30, each evening at 7:30 p.m., with matinees on Saturday and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. The film is rated R for language, violence and sexuality and runs 121 minutes.
The Sunrise Theater is located at 250 Broad St., in Southern Pines. Adult tickets are $7; $6 for matinees. Movies at the Sunrise are ad-free. Concessions are available.
Look for the drama and thriller, “Cache,” opening Friday, May 5.
For more information, call 910-692-3611 or visit www.sun risetheater.com.
