Thomas S. Hibbs reviews Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada on National Review Online:
The film's implicit questions, which transcend politics, concern our treatment of the dead, where they rest and why we remember them. There are indeed three burials: the first is illegal but socially acceptable because the dead man is insignificant to the community; the second is legal but fails to fulfill what is due out of friendship; and the third fulfills what this debt, surpassing mere legality, in a quasi-sacramental way, the efficacy of which is intended not just for the dead man, but even more for those who must go on living.