The Jaguar

Veber has made better and funnier films, and Jean Reno has portrayed far more iconic characters, but there's still a certain charm to The Jaguar that makes it such a cool and fresh adventure comedy. Maybe it's the beautiful Amazon rainforest, the sometimes rather bizarre sense of humour, the charming Patricia Velasquez, or just my fondness for Veber and Reno. In any case, I had a lot of fun with it and the 3* means this time a much more entertaining one-shot than average :-) 65% (23.07.2013)

An enjoyable film, but hardly anything special. Of those that Francis Veber wrote and directed, it is the weakest so far. Jean Reno is perfect, but almost until the end I didn't know what to think of Perrin, played by Patrick Bruel. Most of the time he was so unpleasant and unsympathetic that I wondered if this was Veber's intention or if the mistake had happened somewhere else. This time Vladimir Cosma, when composing the music, did copy from John Barry's Out of Africa, but on the other hand he copied it well. (22.02.2015)

Jean Reno can carry a movie completely on his own; after all, he has already succeeded several times in making perfect films out of above-average ones and making watchable ones out of downright bad ones. Unfortunately, The Jaguar is one of the second types, and without the charisma of the famous tough guy, there would hardly be anything good left in it (perhaps only the supporting roles of Patricia Velasquez and Danny Trejo). It could have become a decent adventure comedy if Patrick Bruel's Perrin wasn't always such a snake and didn't try to cowardly wriggle out of everything. (28.05.2006)