If Jones finds humor in this rough, seemingly inhospitable landscape, it is perhaps because his love for the place and its people are so palpable. The film was inspired by the wrongful shooting of an 18-year-old Texan, Esequiel Hernandez Jr., who lived and died near the border; he was tending goats when he was killed by a marine patrolling for drug smugglers. Yet the film has neither the weight of a morality tale nor the didacticism of a political tract. In one early scene, some border patrol guards count the Mexicans whom they have just captured during an illegal crossing. Noting that three got away, one guard says, “Well, somebody's got to pick strawberries.” Jones lets the line speak for itself.
Jones refrains from grandstanding, but The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is nevertheless 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. (The actress Melissa Leo provides one of the hardest.)
If this is also, unmistakably, the story of a careless border patrol guard forced to endure the same punishing border crossing that thousands of Mexicans take, it is because, as Jones knows, somebody's got to pick the strawberries, herd the cattle, clean the house and join the ranks of a citizenry that doesn't always see the good in its midst.
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