PREY OF THE JAGUAR (1996)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

I'm mildly surprised that I found the first thirty minutes of this low-budget superhero flick adequate. Though prolific director David DeCouteau made a handful of combative films, such as this one with the very long title, to date he's showed almost zero interest to films in the superhero idiom.

Nevertheless, the first half-hour of JAGUAR reminded me of a cheaper version of a standard DTV action movie from some producer like NuImage. Good tension is maintained as we watch insidious drug-lord Bandera (Trevor Goddard of MORTAL KOMBAT repute) sprung from a prison transport by his kung-fu thugs, Bandera and his henchmen are seen to be hissably evil in their killing of police officers, so the viewer knows that when they go after their next target, the body count will be high.

DeCouteau also gives some fair emotional attention to those targets. Derek Leigh (Maxwell Caulfield), his wife and his son have gone into a witness protection plan after Derek put Bandera away. Derek gets the bad news (from none other than his old boss, played by Stacy Keach) about the breakout. Yet before that takes place, Derek indulges his young son's ideas for a new comic-book hero, The Jaguar, who has no super-powers but defeats criminals with his superior fighting-skills and with sleep-darts.

Bandera colludes with agency insiders and, after killing Derek's wife and son off-camera, the villain ambushes Derek. After raging about how Bandera's father died because of his son's incarceration, Bandera shoots Derek dead.

Of course the hero gets better, and he decides to become the hero designed by his late son. DeCouteau works in a nice moment when he seeks out his old agency trainer (John Fujioka) for further martial arts tutelage, and reveals the news of his family's death.

However, after all the setup is done, DeCouteau just falls back into rote-movie mode. Derek's Jaguar costume is largely unimpressive, being beat out even by TV's Nightman design-wise, and the remaining action scenes are poorly executed. Aside from Fujioka, the other supporting actors-- Keach, Linda Blair, and Paul Bartel-- just turn in equally rote performances.