Review

Recall's issue of the soundtrack and original score for The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, the Tommy Lee Jones-directed film (with a screenplay by Guillermo Arriaga) that starred Jones, Julio Cesar Cedillo, January Jones, Melissa Leo, and Dwight Yoakam, is a handsome edition that features percussion, folk, Tex-Mex, norteño, and country. Some of the performers on the soundtrack include Yoakam, Merle Haggard, Lila Downs, Hank Williams, Jr., and the late great Freddy Fender. But it's the band performing Marco Beltrami's haunting score that is the real draw here. Full of spare percussive cues and atmospherics created with acoustic guitars, minimal sound effects, and other limited instruments, the music is as affecting as the film, and Jones and Beltrami should win an award for it.