PLOT: A Texas rancher, stung by indifference to the death of his Mexican cowboy, kidnaps the killer, digs up the corpse and takes both men on an epic, if brutal, journey of revenge and redemption.

On the borderlands of Texas and Mexico, justice is a state of grace men must fight for, even to the death, and especially in a cauldron of poverty and racism at high boil.

That fight, and the passion, morality and circumstances that fuel it, is the essence of Tommy Lee Jones' film The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada.

This is an astounding directorial debut for the gruff actor. He won the best actor prize at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival for the film, but it could just as easily been for best director.

While The Three Burials appears to be a violent modern western, like Sam Pekinpah revisited, it is actually a work of art.

It invokes ancient mythology as well as Biblical tales and more recent stories from the renaissance of U.S. Southern literature, such as the work of William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor.

The depth of this experience is even richer because Jones bites off the starring role -- as a Texas rancher with a high moral standard -- and chews into it like a plug of tobacco. Yet he demonstrates his sensitivity to other actors by coaxing exceptional performances from all of them, most notably Barry Pepper in the pivotal role as a callow youth hired on to the U.S. border patrol, where he brutalizes illegal Mexican immigrants.

Other key players, each one of them with a role infused with the complexities of real life and not movie archetypes, include Dwight Yoakum, Levon Helm, January Jones, Melissa Leo, Cecilia Suarez and, significantly, charismatic Julio Cedillo as the title character.

Cedillo has the thankless but heroic role. He turns up dead in the opening passages of the film and becomes the corpse transported through the harsh backcountry of Texas and across the Rio Grande.

The story of this epic journey, beautifully crafted in both English and Spanish (with subtitles) by Mexican screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, is told in the present with flashbacks to the immediate past. The time shifts allow us to see Cedillo as he arrives in Texas as an illegal immigrant who is hired by Jones as a cowboy. They become friends and share intense experiences, both philosophical and frivolous.

When Cedillo turns up dead and the authorities appear to be cavalier in solving the mystery, Jones takes up the case himself.

He discovers the killer, kidnaps him and takes him on the journey of revenge and redemption that is the heart of the film.

The journey is risky, selfless, even noble, although it is touched by madness.

You could argue the saga is as heroic as one plucked from The Lord Of The Rings, but it is set in the reality of the modern frontier, where U.S. authorities are waging war on their neighbours. Jones' sympathies are obvious (and he is married to a Mexican-American in real life).

But he makes his points through dramatic invention, as does his collaborator Arriaga. And the harsh but gorgeous vistas, beautifully photographed, transform the journey into a visual thrill as well.

As a result, The Three Burials is not a clumsy lecture on human rights, or a political tract. Instead, it offers willing audiences an unusual gift. Like the three men at the heart of The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada, we take a journey from the darkness of ignorance into the light of awareness and insight.

BOTTOM LINE: Tommy Lee Jones' directorial debut is an extraordinarily complex, robust tale. Deceptively, it looks like a violent modern western but the undercurrents and intelligence behind the story elevate this to art.

(This film is rated 14-A)

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