Bullet Points: Coyote Run aka Sworn Enemies (1996)
Getting drunk and watching Michael Paré movies are two of the things that I enjoy doing the most. Do them at the same time and I’m like a 5 year old at Disney. I don’t exactly know what a “Coyote Run” is, but Sworn Enemies feels like a much more apt title. I guess if I drink enough rum, it doesn’t really matter….
Synopsis: Two former mercenaries (Michael Paré and Peter Greene) cross paths as a drunken deputy and a Canadian gangster lock horns with a beautiful woman in the middle of all the chaos.
- Small town crime: We’re introduced to the small town of _______ (I can’t remember) and we learn that Michael Paré’s character Pershing is the town drunk who clearly has seen some shit. He’s also, for some odd reason, filling in for the Sheriff on the weekend and finds himself in the position where he needs to act to stop a bunch of murderers from getting away.
- The bad beat: Speaking of the murderers, Santier (Peter Greene) and his comrades on planning on doing away with some dudes and it leads to a pretty cool scene. A poker game with the targets is happening while Santier’s men have the room directly above them. They have a chalk outline on the floor of where the poker table and the seats are and just start pumping bullets into it. Do that enough and all of the guys on the floor below are leaking blood all over the place. It was a pretty unique way of offing them.
- Town drunks and flying punks: Pershing runs out into the street as Santier makes his getaway and clearly recognizes his face. These guys go way back. Lucky for him, another of the townspeople, Boot, flies a small plane and is able to take Pershing into the air and in chase of Santier and his men. It’s off to Montreal!
- Titty club investigator: It’s not only my dream job title, but also something that Pershing can add to his resume. He recognizes a picture of a woman at the scene of the crime while he’s staring at the poster for a strip club and starts asking around. He connects with Sierra (Macha Grenon), and we get our next important character. She is very familiar with Santier and his henchmen and adds that element of “will she/won’t she” when it comes to the double cross. She’s also not bad to look at…
- Hell’s comin’ to town: Santier puts a price on Pershing’s head and his hitmen start taking their shots at him. They stink. Each of them are dealt with so easily that I didn’t waste time noting each of the attempts. Paré has a couple of cool lines in these sequences but it would have been nice to have a big badass dude who feels like he has a shot of taking Pershing out. Instead he just kicks everyone’s ass.
- Fighting cronies until we meet again: Pershing and Santier used to be a pair of mercenaries working in Africa. This explains all of the emotional scars that Pershing carries around. He and Santier had been working together for some time but Santier went murder crazy and the two had a falling out. I mean that literally as Pershing seemingly died in a bridge incident caused by Santier. Pershing instead woke up in a river full of dead bodies. No wonder he drinks so much.
- A great place to die: One of the bad guys has the line, “When you kill him, make sure you keep on killing him.” It’s a great line, to be sure, but it’s even better when the bad guys are sneaking up on Pershing and Company in the middle of a cemetery. What a cool place for a massive gun battle. The Stallone movie Assassins had a good cemetery shootout in it years ago but any chance of this living up to that is crushed when Pershing and his crew escape on Boot’s plane. LAME!!!
- Farm chores: They finally touch down/get shot down by Santier’s men in a helicopter and we’re poised for one big finale at a farmhouse. By this point, Santier is re-thinking his whole deal as he and Pershing are starting to become buds again. That means that Santier and Pershing are both in the crosshairs of his remaining henchmen and while I had hoped for some massive gun battle, it never really delivers. Like most of the movie, it had tons of promise but just missed on the execution.
It’s the return of the Bonus Bullet Points:
- Yoga Pants: Macha Grenon wears tight little black pants the entire movie cause she’s a stripper. Now every woman in Walmart is wearing those things.
- Favorite quotes: “Hell’s comin’ to town and I’m bringin’ the fire.”
- The snakeman: Santier has a weird fascination with snakes. It’s a little thing and it never really pays off in a meaningful way but it adds something to his character beyond the usual “he’s a bad guy”.
The Verdict: Coyote Run is an adequate B movie that doesn’t deliver enough action at times and never has a credible secondary villain but still manages to maintain the pace and excitement that it has in its opening minutes. The action sequences in the final act could have been insanely good in the hands of someone like John Woo who knows how to use an environment like that to his benefit but director Shimon Dotan never figures it out. I enjoyed it as a fan of Michael Pare and Peter Greene really gets a chance to shine in it, but there are better action movies from ’96 out there and I’d still rather watch Merchant of Death. Coyote Run probably belongs in the top 10 of both Peter Greene and Michael Pare and any fan of B-level action cinema should check it out.
