This is a completely underrated modern-day western. It's directed by Tommy Lee Jones and written by Guillermo Arriaga (Amores Perros, 21 Grams, Babel). It plays with structure much like Arriaga's earlier scripts but in a slightly more low-key manner.
In the movie Barry Pepper plays a border patrol agent who accidently kills the titular Melquiades, an illegal immigrant who's best friend is a fellow ranch-hand played by Jones.
Essentially the movie is about Jones kidnapping Pepper and taking him on a horse-bound trek through the american southwest to the place where Melquiades asked to be burried.
Why its awesome:
- the quirky sense of humor
(a horse gets monumentally destroyed in this movie and its hilarious)
- Tommy Lee Jones' low-key performance that pre-dates his work in No Country for Old Men by two years. It's hard
to believe that this is the same guy that cackled his way through the god-awful Batman Forever.
-Great supporting turns by Melissa Leo, January Jones and Dwight fucking Yoakem.
- January Jones' (pictured left) sex scene. You may expect it to be hot. But instead its one of the most depressing / hilarious things I've ever scene.
- killer cinematography
- the last line of the movie which really makes you re-think everything that's come before
Cinematic Relatives: No Country for old men, The Proposition, 3:10 to Yuma
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