77
Metascore
35 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100Los Angeles TimesKevin ThomasLos Angeles TimesKevin ThomasIncisive yet supple, wrenching yet deeply pleasurable, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada easily ranks among the year's best pictures.
- 90VarietyTodd McCarthyVarietyTodd McCarthyOutstandingly realized on all levels.
- 88Rolling StonePeter TraversRolling StonePeter TraversSam 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.
- 80The Hollywood ReporterKirk HoneycuttThe Hollywood ReporterKirk HoneycuttJones displays a firm hand at the helm -- you sense that he is well within his comfort zone in this environment -- and performances including his own are lively and convincing.
- 80The New York TimesManohla DargisThe New York TimesManohla DargisIn a film filled with plaintively expressive faces, characters say as much when they don't talk as when they speak Mr. Arriaga's dialogue, which sometimes sounds like hardscrabble poetry, sometimes sounds real as dirt and is, rather surprisingly, often darkly funny.
- 75New York Daily NewsJack MathewsNew York Daily NewsJack MathewsA small movie that plays like a Western epic.
- 70Village VoiceMichael AtkinsonVillage VoiceMichael AtkinsonArriaga's script (a prize at Cannes) has a lovely, fascinating shape to it, even if his crushing portrayal of white Americans--all of them, even Jones, suffering from a zombified affect and crippling shortsightedness--is somewhat counterset against his Mexicans, who are all morally balanced, if not always happy or nice.
- 70The A.V. ClubScott TobiasThe A.V. ClubScott TobiasJones directs with all the grit that's associated with his onscreen persona, but Peckinpah would never allow this degree of sentimentality to slip into one of his Westerns. A better comparison might be to Clint Eastwood, another tough-guy actor whose work as a director is often a little soft at the center.
- 60TimeRichard SchickelTimeRichard SchickelThe film comes uncomfortably close to risible. But it also achieves moments of real power. It's worth a wary look before it attains midnight cult-movie status.
- 50Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanEntertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanAn unabashed descendant of "Bring Me the Head." This time, though, it's an entire corpse that gets hauled through the desert, and that's not all that's being toted. So is a hefty parcel of racial correctness.