This film is grimy, gritty, and feels suprisingly realistic. It is about a man seeking justice. Sure that description is off-putting, but theres alot more to it. The film centers on a man who befriends a Mexican that he works with on a ranch and does normal argiculture duties. His friend gets shot by a border patrol officer who mistakenly thinks he is getting shot at by him. The movie is edited in a very unique way. We get scenes from the past with Tommy Lee Jones spending time with Melquiades Estrada. These scenes are in actual Spanish instead of the unrealistic Hollywood fashion of having Spanish just be English but with Spanish accents. The characters inhabit a world that is grimy and pretty much morally depraved, but like most good film noirs theres a moral center. Tommy Lee Jones is the hero of this story, but probably the moral center is Estrada. One scene has Tommy Lee Jones and Estrada go to a hotel room with two married women to sleep with. Estrada does not sleep with the woman. They just sit on the hotel bed and watch tv and listen to music. The character is played with a suprising amount of innocence which makes his death more harrowing. One scene that makes this film a masterpiece occurs in Mexico. Tommy Lee Jones is in a bar drinking a beer and basically just sitting on stool. A little girl plays an out of tune piano and there is Christmas lights hanging down from the bar. It has such a surreal and beautiful effect on me that I think it is one of the greatest scenes I've ever seen. This is a stunning debut from a very talented director (Tommy Lee Jones).
**** out ****
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