The Frame

I call Tommy Lee Jones as the next Clint Eastwood-esque actor-director crossover. Jones directed and starred in this very good little contemporary western, playing a landowner who vows to return the body of one of his Mexican workers to his home after he is killed. The film looks beautiful, nearly as good as anything Eastwood or Peckinpah have done, encompassing Texan and Mexican open spaces as well as the small towns in each. A parallel and intertwining story follows a young border patrol officer and his wife (who is bored to death in the tiny town where he works); at first the film makes him out to be a total jerk and I wondered if it wouldn’t be better to make him sympathetic. However, Jones knew all along what he was doing; the film is as much about the border patrol officer’s redemption arc as it is about Jones’s loyalty to Melquiades Estrada. All in all, not as even a film as I’m Jones will eventually make with more practice, but one well worth watching.
Well Above Average