Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Director: Nicholas Powell, Defiant Screen Entertainment.
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Famke Janssen, Kevin Durand, Lamonica Garrett, Michael Imperioli.
This action thriller sees the ultimate hunter versus the ultimate predator. The opening scene grabs with a vengeance: in the eerie silence of the dense Brazilian rainforest, bearded Frank Walsh (Cage) is smoking a cigar, reading a Real Estate magazine, an unusual sight.
He’s a trapper teetering on a tree limb. He’s waiting to sight a rare white jaguar known as ‘El Fantasma Gato’ (‘The Ghost Cat’). He’s waiting for him to emerge from the trees and eat the goat carcass. When he suddenly, finally, surprisingly appears the confrontation between man and beast is hair-raising.
The hunter and collector in Walsh is confident of getting big money after capturing a priceless jaguar for a zoo. He’s bagged the cat, a mythic devil who is supposedly hungry for human blood and a zoo outside of Madrid is willing to pay him $75,000, but it must be in one piece.
That will prove to be a lot harder than it sounds. Frank has the misfortune of loading his precious cargo (which also includes a family of woolly spider monkeys, some exotic birds and a few hyper-venomous snakes) aboard an old tramp freighter called the Mimer.
However, fate has other plans in the shape of another predator, a crazy assassin facing extradition to America. He’s being ferried back to the US so that he can stand trial for crimes against humanity. Richard Loffler (Durand) is psychotic and creates mayhem. He escapes from his cage and frees all of the animals on board. The Mimer is instantly turned into a floating menagerie of feral beasts; if they don’t kill you, the machine gun-wielding crazy people probably will.
Cage delivers one of his better performances, and then there’s Janssen as a military doctor and Imperioli as a not-so-likeable lawyer. Written by Richard Leder, director Powell wastes no time in cutting straight to the chase.
You will not only scream, but jump out of your skin on many an occasion!
