Tommy Lee Jones' first film as director may well be his second coming; for screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, it's clear on the evidence of Amores Perros and 21 Grams that he likes to do things in threes. Together, they've envisioned a robust Western for the 21st century, where cowboys are allowed the room to share, bond, and form strong lasting male relationships. The film's three burials refer to the death of Melquiades Estrada (Julio Cèsar), an illegal Mexican immigrant whose search for work ends with the generosity of Texan rancher Pete (Jones). Together, the two men become close friends, forging a mateship that is severed when Melquiades is shot dead by volatile border patrolman Mike (Barry Pepper).

Incensed, Pete's revenge involves kidnapping the remorseful killer, exhuming Estrada's corpse, and transporting his body (all the while decomposing, much to our amusement) to a remote Mexican village where he wished to be buried – a desire to lay rest in the spiritual west that's as much about returning to roots as it is about escaping a frontier tainted by billboards, strip malls and never-ending television sets. Arriaga's script is typically layered and unusually sensitive; Jones, after years of growling his way through hackneyed policier roles, has never been better as a ten-gallon warhorse with weatherboards for a face. On par with Brokeback Mountain, this signals a new direction for the genre: two films that have plenty to say when comes to rethinking long-standing masculine stereotypes. A revisionist Western for the new millennium, even George Bush's harsh line against South American emigration gets a working over.—Tim Wong