The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
Pete Perkins kidnaps the Texas officer who murdered his friend to keep a dying promise of returning the body to its Mexican home, sparking a brutal cross‑border chase where personal vengeance collides with unforgiving law.
“Nobody is beyond redemption.”
Synopsis
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 hometown. He kidnaps Norton and exhumes Estrada's corpse, and the odd caravan sets out on horseback for Mexico.
Credits
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How many hands made this film
The scale of the collaboration
Principal cast & crew: 32
These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.
Why a floor?
This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.
Craft leads on file
Edited by Roberto SilviShot by Chris MengesScored by Marco BeltramiDesigned by Merideth Boswell
Box Office
2005 · Box office
📉 Underperformed — grossed 0.8× its budget
Why 2.5×?
Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).
Worldwide gross
$12.0M
Opening week (7-day): $8K
Peak 5 theaters
Also known as
- Los Tres entierros de Melquiades Estradade
- Three Burials – Die drei Begräbnisse des Melquiades Estradade
- Los tres entierros de Melquiades Estradaes
- Trois enterrementsfr
- Le tre sepoltureit
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Cast & Crew
32 unique people credited
Top billed cast
Tommy Lee Jones
as Pete Perkins
Barry Pepper
as Mike Norton
Dwight Yoakam
as Belmont
January Jones
as Lou Ann Norton
Julio Cesar Cedillo
as Melquiades Estrada
Melissa Leo
as Rachel
Levon Helm
as Old Man with Radio
Mel Rodriguez
as Captain Gomez
Cecilia Suarez
as Rosa
Ignacio Guadalupe
as Lucio
Vanessa Bauche
as Mariana
Irineo Alvarez
as Manuel
Supporting cast
12Guillermo Arriaga
as Juan
Josh Berry
as Border Patrolman
Rodger Boyce
as Salesman
Sonny Carl Davis
as Kruger
Richard Andrew Jones
as Bob
Sean Hennigan
as Chuck
Terry Dale Parks
as Neil
Brent Smiga
as Deputy Antonio
Gustavo Sanchez Parra
as Tomas
Diana Chavez
as Woman
Maya Zapata
as El Tostón Woman #1
Victoria Jones
as Immigrant Girl
Directors
1Writers
1Producers
4Other crew
5Parents Guide
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