Coyote

Director:  Brian Peterson

In Coyote, two friends decide to start a kinder, gentler human trafficking business.  One is a bored, retired Caucasian 30 year old.  The other is a struggling half Mexican vending machine tender.  It all begins when a loosely connected friend who was born in Mexico but has lived his entire life here is deported after a traffic stop.  On a weird whim they decide to smuggle him back across the border.  High on the adrenaline rush and ease of their success they decide to do it again, especially after discovering the high price many would pay, especially for “coyotes” who aren’t dangerous, treacherous thugs like many those crossing the border are often forced to deal with. They have brochures, a sales pitch, bronze, silver, and gold plans, and everything.  One of the funniest bits is when they infiltrate the Minutemen and beat them at their own game.

The interesting thing about this movie is how it uses a satirical situation to show us a great deal about the illegal immigration situation.  While they researched their “business,” we got to see the 50 million or so places and ways you can apparently sneak into this country, some easy, some arduous, some potentially deadly.  We see the desperation of those crossing, not wanting to leave their homes and families but desperate for a better life. We see the fears those brought over as children face who can be snatched up and tossed out at any time.  We also see the deadly dangers represented by the other coyotes when they discover the boys’ little business and decide to put a violent end to it.

The main problem with this film is that I just don’t believe it.  From the very beginning, the idea that a successful, 30 year old man will out of pure boredom start a business that he knows is a felony AND that his fiancée who is currently planning their wedding will simply shrug and go along with it is simply ludicrous.  Have you ever known a woman willing to risk anything disrupting her wedding day???  Let alone letting her fiancé start a human trafficking business one month before? They don’t need the money and they are old enough and smart enough to know better.  At one point, this man who researched every detail of smuggling admits he does not even know the number of years they could get for breaking this law- hell that’s the first thing I would’ve looked up! Nothing was ever done to explain what would motivate these characters to do such a thing and because of that they just seemed like shallow add-ons to a better movie, with the problem being that they were two of the three main characters, so their entire storyline just weighed the movie down.  By the time they suddenly voice fears about the consequences two thirds of the way through the movie, it just doesn’t ring true.  Why ever do it then?  Why?

The story of half Mexican Jesse who had nothing else going for him and found not only more success from this than from anything else in his life but also found love across the border and the sense that he was actually helping people should have been the story here, with the friend just the voice to lead him down the wrong path.  He felt real, as did his motivations, doubts, and choices. There’s good stuff in here, but if they had cut the other storyline it would’ve been much better.

Lucy Cruell