The Jaguar

Francis Veber was one of my favorite directors when I was growing up. His sense of comedy mixed with drama was outstanding for its time and three movies he made with Pierre Richard and Gerard Depardieu in the 1980s were and still are some of the ones I love dearly to this day. With Le Jaguar he returns to his habitual characters of Campana and Perrin, this time portrayed by Jean Reno and Patrick Bruel respectively. This is a story of a young, spoiled and no-good man who takes on a quest to rescue another man's soul but finds his own along the way; he grows up, re-evaluates things, learns to deal with his problems and probably for the first time in his life starts to act like a true human being. This movie shows us that if we are wound up in a certain place at a certain time magical things can happen to us because destiny stretches out everywhere and reaches out to everyone. Beautiful score by the master Vladimir Cosma who worked with Veber on many of his masterpieces, wonderful atmposphere and great set locations on the Amazon river, along with good acting and a nice afterthought make this movie a very enjoyable watch on a lonely evening.