The Three Burials of Melquiades EstradaMovies like The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
- Key Features:
- Revenge, Moral ambiguity, Kidnapping, Friendship, Border crossing, American Southwest, Crime, Redemption, Mortality, Violence-moderate
- Tone:
- serious, gritty, restrained
- Target Audience:
- Independent film enthusiasts, Neo-western fans, Character-driven drama viewers
- Emotional Arc:
- Grief → Determination → Catharsis
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

When brash Texas border officer Mike Norton wrongfully kills and buries the friend and ranch hand of Pete Perkins, the latter is reminded of a promise he made to bury his friend, Melquiades Estrada, in his Mexican home town. He kidnaps Norton and exhumes Estrada's corpse, and the odd caravan sets out on horseback for Mexico.
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
Two Texas border guards find a jeep buried in the desert, with a skeleton, a scoped rifle, and a box with $800,000 in cash. Before they decide whether to keep the money or report it, they privately investigate the clues and unravel a decades old mystery.

After crossing the border illegally for work, Miguel, a hard-working father and devoted husband, finds himself wrongfully accused of murdering a former sheriff’s wife. After learning of his imprisonment, Miguel’s pregnant wife tries to come to his aid and lands in the hands of corrupt coyotes who hold her for ransom. Dissatisfied with the police department’s investigation, the former sheriff tries to uncover the truth about his wife’s death and discovers disturbing evidence that will destroy one family’s future, or tear another’s apart.

When the skeleton of his murdered predecessor is found, Sheriff Sam Deeds unearths many other long-buried secrets in his Texas border town.

For three US Border Patrol agents, the contents of one car reveal an insidious plot within their own ranks. The next 24 hours may cost them their lives.

Lean, mean Texas Ranger Jack Benteen locks horns with a former friend, Cash Bailey, now a ruthless drug kingpin. Though they're on opposite sides of the law, they share a love interest in the sensual Sarita. When a crew of rogue soldiers descends upon the border town for an off-the-books mission, all roads lead to a bloody, to-the-death showdown, as loyalties shift and the lines between good and evil are blurred.

A corrupted border agent decides to clean up his act when an impoverished woman's baby is put up for sale on the black market.

American corporations are using the North American Free Trade Agreement by opening large maquiladoras right across the United States–Mexico border. The maquiladoras hire mostly Mexican women to work long hours for little money in order to produce mass quantity products. Lauren Adrian, an impassioned American news reporter for the Chicago Sentinel wants to be assigned to the Iraq front-lines to cover the war. Instead, her editor George Morgan assigns her to investigate a series of slayings involving young maquiladora factory women in a Mexican bordertown.

A young and fiercely independent woman, Carmen, is forced to flee her home in the Mexican desert following the brutal murder of her mother. She survives an illegal border crossing into the US, only to be confronted by a lawless volunteer border guard. When the border guard and his patrol partner Aidan become embroiled in a deadly standoff, the pair is forced to escape together.

Struggling to make ends meet, former special ops soldiers reunite for a high-stakes heist: stealing $75 million from a South American drug lord.

A former Marine and his old war buddy face off against the Mexican cartel behind the disappearance of his daughter.

Three college students, Phil, Ed, and Henry take a road trip into Mexico for a week of drinking and carefree fun only to have Phil find himself a captive of a group of satanic Mexican drug smugglers who kill tourists and whom are looking for a group of new ones to prepare for a sacrifice.

In a desperate attempt to reach Europe and crouched before an airstrip in Cameroon, a six-year-old boy and his older sister wait to sneak into the holds of an airplane. Not too far away, an environmental activist contemplates the terrible image of an elephant, dead and fangless. Not only do you have to fight against poaching, but you will also have to meet the problems of your newly arrived daughter from Spain. Thousands of kilometers to the north, in Melilla, a group of civil guards prepare to face the furious crowd of sub-Saharan people who have begun the assault on the fence. Three stories linked by a central theme, in which none of its protagonists know that their destinies are doomed to cross and that their lives will no longer be the same.

A troubled man runs away to Mexico and is recruited to join a paramilitary group of teens fighting the drug cartels. He proves himself to the group, but questions their motive.

Lt. Col. Kirby Yorke is posted on the Texas frontier to defend settlers against depredations of marauding Apaches. Col. Yorke is under considerable stress by a serious shortage of troops of his command. Tension is added when Yorke's son (whom he hasn't seen in fifteen years), Trooper Jeff Yorke, is one of 18 recruits sent to the regiment.

A young Mexican woman crosses the border in search of the American dream, only to instead find her worst nightmare lying within.

El Mariachi plunges headfirst into the dark border underworld when he follows a trail of blood to the last of the infamous Mexican drug lords, Bucho, for an action-packed, bullet-riddled showdown. With the help of his friend and a beautiful bookstore owner, El Mariachi tracks Bucho, takes on his army of desperados, and leaves his own trail of blood.

A mysterious gunfighter named Django is employed by a local crooked political boss as a hangman to execute innocent locals framed by the boss, who wants their land. What the boss doesn't know is that Django isn't hanging the men at all, just making it look like he is, and using the men he saves from the gallows to build up his own "gang" in order to take revenge on the boss, who, with Django's former best friend, caused the death of his wife years before.

Llewelyn Moss stumbles upon dead bodies, $2 million and a hoard of heroin in a Texas desert, but methodical killer Anton Chigurh comes looking for it, with local sheriff Ed Tom Bell hot on his trail. The roles of prey and predator blur as the violent pursuit of money and justice collide.

Ten years after the Civil War has ended, the Governor of Texas asks Leander McNelly to form a company of Rangers to help uphold the law along the Mexican border. With a few veterans of the war, most of the recruits are young men who have little or no experience with guns or policing crime.

To find Joseba, a dying friend, and see him reunite with his daughter Ely, two old friends, Jean Pierre and Tocho, embark with her on a road trip through the Sahara desert, from Spain to Mali.

Academy Award Winner Cuba Gooding, Jr. is a Border Patrol Officer in the New Mexico desert with a secret past that is about to catch up with him. When his old gang leader tracks him down and forces him to smuggle drugs across the border, he must choose between the life he swore to leave behind and saving his family at any cost.

A small-town beauty queen and an unlicensed mortician set out across the Texas plains on a journey of self-discovery.

Magdalena makes a journey to find her son, who has disappeared on his way to the Mexican border with the United States. Her odyssey takes her to meet Miguel, a man recently deported from the US. They start to travel together, Magdalena looking for her son, and Miguel hoping to see his mother again.

An outlaw named Guerrero Hernandez is shot in the back and killed whilst attempting to free his half-brother from a small-town prison. Making a deal with the devil, Hernandez returns from the dead to take his revenge.

When a handshake deal goes sour, funeral home owner Jeremiah O'Keefe enlists charismatic, smooth-talking attorney Willie E. Gary to save his family business. Tempers flare and laughter ensues as the unlikely pair bond while exposing corporate corruption and racial injustice.

A debt-ridden father takes advantage of an unforeseen situation to disappear and live off the grid under a false identity. But a chance event occurs and the temptation to want to know his family resurfaces.

Benjamin and Dom have been best friends since they were kids. On their last night together, Dom plans to send Benjamin off with a pocketful of cash. All he has to do is deliver a package over the border for a friend...

Lewis, Sheriff and Tony are three friends vacationing in Malaysia. Sheriff and Tony eventually leave to pursue careers in New York, but Lewis stays behind to work with orangutans. Two years later, Sheriff and Tony learn that, because of their past actions, Lewis has been arrested for drug possession. With Lewis facing a death sentence, the friends are left with a difficult decision: return to Malaysia and split Lewis' sentence, or let him die.

Old Mexican-American sheriff Bob Valdez has always been a haven of sanity in a land of madmen when it came to defending law and order. But the weapon smuggler Frank Tanner is greedy and impulsive. When Tanner provokes a shooting that causes the death of an innocent man and Valdez asks him to financially compensate the widow, Tanner refuses to do so and severely humiliates Valdez, who will do justice and avenge his honor, no matter what it takes.

A female American reporter searches for her missing brother against the backdrop of violence and human smuggling across the US/Mexican border.

A melancholic gunfighter is drawn into a vengeful and tragic kidnapping plot by his widowed ex-lover.

Arnulfo Rubio smuggles weapons from Arizona to Mexico for a drug cartel, but he is being investigated by agent Harris. When agent Harris blows his covers, he and Arnulfo end up in a journey where he will be the hostage of this young criminal.

A band of Mexicans find their U. S. land claims denied and all the records destroyed in a courthouse fire. Their leader, Louis Chama, encourages them to use force to regain their land. A wealthy landowner wanting the same decides to hire a gang of killers with Joe Kidd to track Chama.

After being deported back to Mexico, a man has no choice but to join the vicious drug cartel that has corrupted his hometown in order to survive.

A man wanders out of the desert not knowing who he is. His brother finds him, and helps to pull his memory back of the life he led before he walked out on his family and disappeared four years earlier.

A group of mostly black infantrymen return from the Spanish-American War with a cache of gold. They travel to the West where their leader searches for the men who lynched his father.

Jim Douglass arrives in the small town of Rio Arriba in order to witness the hanging of the four men he believes murdered his wife. When the convicts escape, Jim tracks them into Mexico, determined to see that justice is done. But the farther Jim goes in his quest for vengeance, the more merciless he becomes, losing himself in an unrelenting spiral of hatred and violence.

While leading a police investigation of a massacre in a public school at the border of Mexico and U.S.A, special Agent Emanuel Ritter links this strange case to the coming and rising of the ancient demon Belzebuth. But in order to stop the trail of upcoming infanticides, Ritter shall have to confront himself before dealing with the forces of good and evil.

A trio of unemployed silent film actors are mistaken for real heroes by a small Mexican village in search of someone to stop a malevolent bandit.

Marshal Chris Adams turns down a friend's request to help stop the depredations of a gang of Mexican bandits. When his wife is killed by bank robbers and his friend is killed capturing the last thief, Chris feels obligated to take up his friend's cause and recruits a writer and five prisoners to destroy the desperadoes.The last in the original series of four "Magnificent Seven" movies.

Jim Hanson’s quiet life is suddenly disturbed by two people crossing the US/Mexico border – a woman and her young son – desperate to flee a Mexican cartel. After a shootout leaves the mother dead, Jim becomes the boy’s reluctant defender. He embraces his role as Miguel’s protector and will stop at nothing to get him to safety, as they go on the run from the relentless assassins.

A newly appointed small-town sheriff and his begrudging deputy get tangled up in a web of lies and corruption involving shady businessmen and the cartel while investigating the murder of a mysterious woman.

Forced to give up his land and home, Texas rancher Red Bovie isn't about to retire quietly in a dismal trailer park. Instead he hops in his Cadillac and hits the road with his estranged grandson for one last wild adventure filled with guns, women and booze. It’s just another night in Old Mexico.

When a small town near the Arizona-Mexico border is wiped out overnight, suspicion falls on the lone survivor. But a roll of photos the survivor took that night tells a different story.

A coffin-dragging gunslinger and a prostitute become embroiled in a bitter feud between a merciless masked clan and a band of Mexican revolutionaries.

An ultraconservative family father must spend a weekend with his dysfunctional children for the burial of his wife.

A group of Mexican emigrants attempts to cross the Mexican-US border. What begins as a hopeful journey becomes a harrowing, bloody and primal fight for survival when a deranged, rifle-toting vigilante and his loyal Belgian Malinois dog chase the group of unarmed men and women through the treacherous borderland. In the harsh, unforgiving desert terrain, the odds are stacked firmly against them as they discover there’s nowhere to hide from the unrelenting, merciless killer.

When a straight-laced couple that has fun with a rowdy couple on vacation in Mexico return to the States, they discover that the crazy couple they met in Mexico followed them back home and decide to play tricks on them.

Six years ago NASA discovered the possibility of alien life within our solar system. A probe was launched to collect samples, but crashed upon re-entry over Central America. Soon after, new life forms began to appear and half of Mexico was quarantined as an infected zone. Today, the American and Mexican military still struggle to contain "the creatures," while a journalist agrees to escort a shaken tourist through the infected zone in Mexico to the safety of the U.S. border.

Michael ‘Jay’ Cochran has just left the Navy after 12 years and he's not quite sure what he's going to do, except that he knows he wants a holiday. He decides to visit Tiburon Mendez, a powerful but shady Mexican businessman who he once flew to Alaska for a hunting trip. Arriving at the Mendez mansion in Mexico, he is immediately surprised by the beauty and youth of Mendez’s wife, Miryea.

In 1971, five college buddies from the University of Texas embark on a final road trip odyssey across the Mexican border before facing up to uncertain futures, in Vietnam and otherwise.

After a series of gory murders commited by mobs of townspeople against visiting tourists, the corpses appear to be coming back to life and living normally as locals in the small town.

Two old friends reconnect at their friend's funeral, and decide to exact revenge on the widower who wronged all three of them decades earlier.

Texas Ranger Samantha Payne reopens a 15-year-old missing person case, and uncovers evidence that suggests that the boy was likely murdered on a ranch belonging to wealthy family man, Scott Briggs. When Scott’s estranged son unexpectedly returns home during the investigation, Samantha becomes even more convinced that the Briggs family was involved, and will stop at nothing to discover the truth about the boy’s death - even putting her own life in jeopardy.

When David, Juliet, and Alex find their new roommate dead with a large sum of money, they agree to hide the body and keep the cash. However, this newfound fortune gradually corrodes their friendship.

In small-town Texas, affable and popular mortician Bernie Tiede strikes up a friendship with Marjorie Nugent, a wealthy widow well known for her sour attitude. When she becomes controlling and abusive, Bernie goes to great lengths to remove himself from her grasp.

After the death of her daughter at the hand of her boyfriend, Marisela Escobedo began to fight for justice not only against the murderer but also against the corrupt Mexican judicial system.

An undertaker gets married to an old executioner's daughter and, although he doesn't like it, must continue the profession of his father-in-law after his retirement.

Three thugs kidnap Emma, the daughter of a drug kingpin, and have no idea that murderous blood that runs through her veins. As time passes, the unlucky threesome finds themselves in danger from the police, gangsters and their captive.

Three lifelong 40-year-old friends go on a huge Interrail tour to honor their recently deceased friend.

An American bartender and his prostitute girlfriend go on a road trip through the Mexican underworld to collect a $1 million bounty on the head of a dead gigolo.

Set in a Tex-Mex border town, Not Forgotten is a classic psychological thriller about Jack and Amaya Bishop, a couple who must come to terms with their tortured pasts in order to save their kidnapped daughter. It is a tale taut with intrigue and steeped in Latino mysticism, where the line between what's real and what's imagined becomes hopelessly blurred.

Five different criminals face imminent death after botching a job quite badly.

The Texas Rangers chase down a gang of outlaws led by Butch Cavendish, but the gang ambushes the Rangers, seemingly killing them all. One survivor is found, however, by an American Indian named Tonto, who nurses him back to health. The Ranger, donning a mask and riding a white stallion named Silver, teams up with Tonto to bring the unscrupulous gang and others of that ilk to justice.

A 40-year-old loser named Isidoro at the request of his brother drives from Italy to mountainous Carpathian village in Ukraine with a coffin of a diseased Ukrainian worker, who died at a construction site in Italy.

In a small New Mexico town, teenager Hilary gets into a fender bender and innocently exchanges her personal information with the other driver, a terrifying and bizarre serial killer who stalks the country’s endless miles of roads and streets with his old rusty car, hungrily searching for his next unsuspecting victim.

Erstwhile Special Forces operative Doc Alexander is asked to broker a truce with the Mexican drug cartel in secrecy. When Oklahoma Governor Richard Jeffs celebrates the execution of a high-ranking cartel member on TV, his Chief of Staff and Doc inform him about the peace he just ended. But it’s too late, as Cuco, the cartel’s hatchet man, has set his vengeful sights on Doc’s daughter Dixie.

An intimate story of the enduring bond of friendship between two hard-living men, set against a sweeping backdrop: the American West, post-World War II, in its twilight. Pete and Big Boy are masters of the prairie, but ultimately face trickier terrain: the human heart.

Barren Land is the story of three friends. All three trapped between the abandonment of the institutions, the violent and unstoppable rise of the narco in the province and the dangerous increase of social discontent. Three friends trapped in a powder keg that will test their friendship.

Jake Remy leads a gang of outlaw cutthroats making their escape toward Mexico from a successful robbery. Barring their way is a river--crossable only by means of a ferry barge. The barge operator, Travis, refuses to be bullied into providing transport for the gang and escapes across river with most of the local populace--leaving Remy and his gang behind, desperately seeking a way across. A river-wide stand-off begins between the gang and the townspeople, both groups of which have left people on the wrong side of the river.

Three bumbling Army reservists are hustled onto a plane headed for combat in Iraq -- but the fact that the plane drops them in Mexico doesn't stop them from "liberating" what they believe to be the Middle East.

An American businessman with a stake in a pharmaceutical company that's about to go public finds his life is thrown into turmoil by an incident in Mexico.

A man on the run from his own sins, finds himself in a small border town in Texas, impersonating a reverend. The town are quickly drawn to the man's unorthodox sermons, but so is a police chief who has his suspicions.

Paul Rivers, an ailing mathematician lovelessly married to an English émigré; Christina Peck, an upper-middle-class suburban housewife and mother of two girls; and Jack Jordan, a born-again ex-con, are brought together by a terrible accident that changes their lives.

In the Mexican state of Michoacán, Dr. Jose Mireles, a small-town physician known as "El Doctor," shepherds a citizen uprising against the Knights Templar, the violent drug cartel that has wreaked havoc on the region for years. Meanwhile, in Arizona's Altar Valley—a narrow, 52-mile-long desert corridor known as Cocaine Alley—Tim "Nailer" Foley, an American veteran, heads a small paramilitary group called Arizona Border Recon, whose goal is to halt Mexico’s drug wars from seeping across our border.

Caye is a young prostitute whose family is unaware of her profession. She meets her striking Dominican neighbour Zulema, an illegal immigrant, after she finds her in the bathroom, badly beaten up. They strike up a close friendship unbeknownst to Caye's xenophobic co-workers.

Pat Garrett is hired as a lawman on behalf of a group of wealthy New Mexico cattle barons to bring down his old friend Billy the Kid.

The accidental breakdown of an irrigation valve launches a hot confrontation between the mainly Latino farmers in a tiny New Mexico town and the real estate developers and politicians determined to acquire their land for a golf resort.

Ride with the Devil follows four people who are fighting for truth and justice amidst the turmoil of the American Civil War. Director Ang Lee takes us to a no man's land on the Missouri/Kansas border where a staunch loyalist, an immigrant's son, a freed slave, and a young widow form an unlikely friendship as they learn how to survive in an uncertain time. In a place without rules and redefine the meaning of bravery and honor.

Having fled to Mexico from the U.S. many years ago for killing his father's murderer, Martin Brady travels to Texas to broker an arms deal for his Mexican boss, strongman Governor Cipriano Castro. Brady breaks a leg and while recuperating in Texas the gun shipment is stolen. Complicating matters further the wife of local army major Colton has designs on him, and the local Texas Ranger captain makes him a generous offer to come back to the states and join his outfit. After killing a man in self-defense, Brady slips back over the border and confronts Castro who is not only unhappy that Brady has lost his gun shipment but is about to join forces with Colton to battle the local raiding Apache Indians.

When a mysterious fog surrounds the boundaries of California, there is a communication breakdown and all the Mexicans disappear, affecting the economy and the state stops working missing the Mexican workers and dwellers.

Two miners agree to guide a mysterious woman, who has appeared in their camp from nowhere, to a nearby town; but soon, because of her erratic behavior, they begin to suspect that her true purpose is quite different.

When a narco past his prime refuses to pay a debt to an upstart, only a secret stash of money can save his men. But guess what the gardener just found?

Two policemen, one an old-timer, the other his volatile younger partner, find themselves suspended when a video of their strong-arm tactics becomes the media's cause du jour. Low on cash and with no other options, these two embittered soldiers descend into the criminal underworld to gain their just due, but instead find far more than they wanted awaiting them in the shadows.

Sayra, a Honduran teen, hungers for a better life. Her chance for one comes when she is reunited with her long-estranged father, who intends to emigrate to Mexico and then enter the United States. Sayra's life collides with a pair of Mexican gangmembers who have boarded the same American-bound train.

Jérémie returns to his hometown for the funeral of his former boss, the village baker. He decides to stay for a few days with Martine, the man's widow. A mysterious disappearance, a threatening neighbor and a priest with strange intentions make Jérémie's short stay in the village take an unexpected turn.

A young botanist relocates to a small desert town to study an invasive plant species. While out on research, she comes to the aid of a downed plane only to find herself taken captive by an inexperienced drug mule who forces her to lead a trek across the sweltering desert to his drop. A local sheriff is drawn into the hunt as his rebellious daughter sets out to find the missing botanist, all the while being pursued by a local drug receiver.

Two friends hired to police a small town that is suffering under the rule of a rancher find their job complicated by the arrival of a young widow.

A mysterious man arrives at the offices of an FBI agent and recounts his childhood: how his religious fanatic father received visions telling him to kill people who were in fact "demons."

When a promised job for Texan Michael fails to materialize in Wyoming, Mike is mistaken by Wayne to be the hitman he hired to kill his unfaithful wife, Suzanne. Mike takes full advantage of the situation, collects the money, and runs. During his getaway, things go wrong, and soon get worse when he runs into the real hitman, Lyle.

When his brother-in-law runs afoul of a drug lord, family man Chris Farraday turns to a skill he abandoned long ago—smuggling—to repay the debt. But the job goes wrong, and Farraday finds himself wanted by cops, crooks and killers alike.

Tough-as-nails vampire hunter Derek Bliss is on the hunt for "suckers" in the heart of Mexico when he receives a new assignment from a mysterious client. Thrown together with a group of slayers, including sexy Zooey, who may or may not be one of the undead. Derek and company are up against a growing number of fast-moving, bloodthirsty vampires and their elusive and powerful leader.

Earl Stone, a man in his eighties, is broke, alone, and facing foreclosure of his business when he is offered a job that simply requires him to drive. Easy enough, but, unbeknownst to Earl, he's just signed on as a drug courier for a Mexican cartel. He does so well that his cargo increases exponentially, and Earl hit the radar of hard-charging DEA agent Colin Bates.

Faced with the decision of a lifetime, Arvilla Holden enlists her two best friends and sets off in a vintage '66 Bonneville convertible to deliver her late husband's ashes to Santa Barbara.

Fidencio Borer, an apothecary in a village on the northern border of Mexico, discovers some old title of a mine in Arizona and decides to claim them. Trying to cross the border is a border guard intercepted by exaggerating in the line of duty. On the way is captured by a tribe of Apaches and is about to be burned alive, but thanks to the Great Head Horse Lying having toothache and learns that the prisoner it can heal, ordered his release on the condition that the cure. Fidencio would take the wheel and gets the eternal friendship of the Chief apache.

Five friends return home from a marriage in Canada to the United States. Not far from the border, two customs officers stop them to check their identity.

A disgruntled Mexican cop is forced to work with a teenage hacker to hunt down the criminals who killed his wife, and dismantle their operation.

Follows a police officer who must retrieve an eyewitness and escort her after a cartel shooting leaves several DEA agents dead, but then he must decide who to trust when they discover that the attack was executed by American forces.

