Lately it seems as if Tommy Lee Jones has been in a rut ever since winning his much-deserved Oscar for his stolid turn in The Fugitive in 1993 as the relentlessly dogged Lt. Gerard. In his latest, and his first trip behind the camera theatrically (he directed the Western The Good Old Boys for cable’s TNT in 1995), Jones finally does exactly what the film attempts for its characters: redeem himself.
The premise is simple in a pulpy western sort of way. Jones stars as Pete Perkins, a ranch foreman in a Texas border town who is outraged when his good friend Melquaides Estrada (Julio Cesar Cedillo) is seemingly gunned down in cold blood for no apparent reason. As Perkins attempts to find a hypothesis for this senseless crime and affront to his own personal integrity, he is faced with stonewalling by the local Sheriff Belmont (Dwight Yoakam, doing a good bad) whose indifferent racism is barely cloaked as he determines that the death was an accident and has Estrada unceremoniously dumped into an empty, unmarked grave after his body is discovered haphazardly buried not far from where he was killed (by a coyote gnawing at the corpse).
The reality is that Estrada was killed by a careless shot fired by a heedless new border patrolman, Mike Norton (Barry Pepper, who is excellent), who has a way of turning off his emotions even when he is screwing his newlywed hottie of a bride Lou Ann (January Jones). Norton's lame cover-up is soon discovered when Perkins' lover Rachel (a fine Melissa Leo), the local diner's waitress (whose also having a fling with jerk Sheriff Belmont) overhears a conversation between a border officer and the sheriff about Norton's role in the death.
When Perkins learns of this, especially after angrily accosting Belmont for his lack of informing him that the body was re-buried with no dignity, he is dead-sent on rectifying the situation, even if it means killing Norton in the process. What follows is Perkins beating Norton up, handcuffing him, leading him to the body, unearthing it, placing Estrada’s corpse on a horse and then forcing Belmont to follow him into Mexico to give his friend a decent burial.
During the journey, and with a steamed Belmont in hot pursuit to nail Perkins' ass to the wall just for the hell of it, the two disparate men face off with anger and retribution only to ultimately forge an unspoken bond as Perkins is determined to have Norton literally walk a mile in his slain amigo's path by experiencing an immigrant’s migration and hopefully teach the stubborn young man a valuable life lesson. For Belmont, all human beings deserve proper treatment, the living and the dead.
Jones proves to be a natural talent as a director echoing John Huston, Sam Peckinpah and his contemporary Clint Eastwood in his no-frills/no-fuss, clean-eyed view of telling a story with little fanfare and relying on strong characters as the muscle of his storyline (the screenplay by Guillermo Arriaga, 21 Grams, is more than just a parable of right and wrong). Jones gives his best performance as the grizzled veteran cowboy with a good sense of right and wrong, and although he is flawed (he drinks, is a loner and seems to be serving his own needs more than his dead friend's) his Pete Perkins is an indelible force of nature. He speaks volumes with silence, his craggy visage searing through the screen.
Pepper gives a strong, shrewd performance, his best since Saving Private Ryan, making his petty, indifferent asshole a flesh and blood person that ultimately gains the audience's empathy. He’s a prisoner being punished by a nearly crazed stranger, suffering many indignities (including a rattlesnake bite!) for his unacknowledged blameless sin.
I particularly enjoyed the welcome black humor, largely seen in the duo's discovery of an unlikely oasis in the form of a blind elderly man adrift in the vast no-man’s land of the desert (a barely recognizable Levon Helm, best known as one of the legendary musicians of The Band) who also provides the movie’s most jarring sequence as well. To say more would ruin the experience, but when it occurs it really tugs at your conscience.
Jones succeeds in depicting how racism is still rampant in this country and in Mexico, and also spotlighting the plight of the illegal immigrant today. It is an elegiac peon to an old west sentiment; do the right thing and the right thing might do you.
