Usually when a widely respected actor or actress makes a directorial debut, their film owes a distinctive debt to the work of another director. Robert De Niro's fantastic A Bronx Tale\ had all the hallmarks of a sweeping Scorsese mobster epic, and before he astonished everyone with ""Good Night, and Good Luck,"" George Clooney helmed a decent but somewhat timid adaptation of Chuck Barris' so-called autobiography, ""Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,"" that had more than just a whiff of Soderbergh slickness. Although Tommy Lee Jones' debut, a modern-day Western called ""The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada,"" has drawn numerous references to legendary director Sam Peckinpah, it is a well-acted but ultimately unremarkable morality tale. In fact, ""Three Burials"" is technically not Jones' debut—he previously helmed a TNT film called ""The Good Old Boys""—but it is his first film to be theatrically released to widespread acclaim. Jones stars as Pete Perkins, a taciturn cowboy whose beloved friend Melquiades (Julio Cedillo) is killed in a moronic accident by newbie border patrolman Mike Norton (Barry Pepper). After he discovers the authorities plan on ignoring the incident, Perkins concocts a plan to honor Melquiades that involves digging him up, kidnapping Norton and heading south of the border to bury him in his hometown. Other supporting characters hover around the proceedings, and through a handful of flashbacks, we become privy to the intimate relationships and hidden ironies created by them. We meet some of the town's residents, including Norton's pretty young wife (January Jones, Stifler's object of affection in ""American Wedding""), the impotent sheriff (Dwight Yoakum) and an amorous diner waitress (Melissa Leo) who's more bored than horny. With a complex script by Guillermo Arriaga (who previously wrote two of the past decade's best movies, ""21 Grams"" and ""Amores Perros""), the subtleties and nuances of these criss-crossing lives enhance the central events of the film. ""Three Burials"" is most involving when Jones lingers on the tedium of the small Texas town everyone has to live in, observing friendships and sexual relationships that blossom almost solely out of necessity. These characters spend a lot of time smoking cigarettes and watching people come and go in a town which is, like a certain Yoakum song's refrain, one thousand miles from nowhere. The long hike Perkins and Norton take is, on the other hand, not as engaging. It has its inspired moments, most notably a visit with a wizened old man (The Band's drummer Levon Helm) who helps them out and then makes a startlingly poignant request. But the journey, which is always visually stunning, has a tendency to lag on its way to an obvious and predictable conclusion. To Arriaga and Jones' credit, the ending is much more restrained than it could have been, but it is still abrupt and disappointingly anticlimactic. Also, the film often contradicts its efforts to show complexity by portraying all of the Mexicans as good-hearted saints and nearly all of the Caucasians as petty, cruel, dismissive and sexually dysfunctional. This isn't to say that Jones descends into ""Crash""-style hyperbole, but as an allegorical piece of social commentary, ""Three Burials"" occasionally feels smug. When it clicks, ""Three Burials"" is thoughtful and interesting, but despite a plethora of intriguing moments and scenes, the film runs out of steam. It's a prestigious film that won Best Actor and Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival and will appeal to some while boring others. However, Jones coaxes uniformly proficient performances from his cast and shows enough genuine promise behind the camera to make one hope he directs another film.
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