Don't let the really cool-looking cover art for David DeCoteau's "Prey of the Jaguar" fool you - it's really not about a man who transforms into a giant humanoid cat and begins killing people. Although that concept would have been kind of cool (even better when combined with its real plot), unfortunately that's just not what we get here.
No.
It's simply about a retired government agent named Derek Leigh (Maxwell Caulfield) who becomes a high-kicking superhero - known only as "The Jaguar" - versed in the martial arts after his pregnant wife and young son are killed by a ruthless Los Angeles drug dealer named Damien Bandera (the late Trevor Goddard); the overall concept of "The Jaguar" is based largely upon a fantasy created by his murdered son. And while the police are not particularly supportive of Derek Leigh/The Jaguar's vigilante actions, he does find one unlikely ally in homicide detective Cody Johnson ("The Exorcist" Linda Blair), who investigated the original murders of Leigh's family.
This is a fairly typical superhero-action movie romp from the mid-1990s (1996, to be exact). The movie is particularly noteworthy for its formidable cast of "B"-movie regulars, the most appealing, of course, being a post-"The Exorcist" Linda Blair - even though she's not on the screen that much and only appears in a few scenes. I guess the one really good thing to be said about this picture is that it moves through its by-the-numbers motions pretty quickly and it does appear that Maxwell Caulfield is doing the majority of his own martial arts fight sequences (which is about the most authentic thing about them in the first place).
It's a really good way to kill an hour-and-a-half of an otherwise really boring weekday (or weekend) afternoon.
4/10
