Coyote Waits

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Coyote Waits ★★½ 2003

Another adaptation of a Tony Hillerman novel, following “Skinwalker,” about Navaho policemen Jim Chee (Beach) and Joe Leaphorn (Studi). Chee discovers the dead body of a fellow officer near some caves and finds drunken suspect Ashie Pinto (Herman) wandering the roads with a bottle and a gun. Since Leaphorn's wife Emma (Tousey) and Pinto are kin, she requests her husband investigate while Chee also has some questions. Pinto told legends involving Butch Cassidy to a local professor, who believed the outlaw survived Bolivia, only to die on the Navaho reservation. A Vietnamese immigrant with ties to the CIA and Native American mysticism all play their part but the slowpaced story is sometimes confusing. 105m/C VHS, DVD . Wes Studi, Adam Beach, Sheila Tousey, Jimmy Herman, Keith Carradine, Graham Greene, Alex Rice, Bodhi (Pine) Elfman, Long Nguyen; D: Jan Egleson; W: Lucky Gold; C: Roy Wagner; M: B.C. Smith. TV