by Taylor Huffman

Created on: December 24, 2006   Last Updated: May 09, 2007

If you are of faint heart, I recommend staying as far away from this movie as possible. If, however, you are of the manly and salty stock, and you enjoy movies where jaguars consume the faces of men, then do as I have done, and see this movie at least fifteen times.

The movie begins in the village of a young man name Jaguar Paw. He is hunting one day with his tribal comrades when they come across a group of other trible peoples fleeing their lands. From this point the viewer is pervaded with a sense of forboding, however, Jaguar Paw's father asserts that fear is the most abhorrent of all diseases, and convinces Jaguar Paw to let his worrying concerning the matter pass.

Early the next morning, we find precisely what had caused the other tribe to flee. Mayan slave traders arrive at the village and a battle ensues in which the Mayans win and prepare to transport their new slaves to the city for sacrificial ceremony. Jaguar Paw is one of the many captured, however, he has managed to stash his pregnant wife and child away in a deep vertical cave before being captured.

Jaguar Paw and his tribe are led for awhile untill they eventually reach the Mayan city. The sacrifices take place, and Jaguar Paw watches a few of his friends' heads roll down the temple into the roaring crowd. Remembering his wife and child stuck in the cave, he is endowed with a grim sense of determination and decides that he cannot die now. Right as he is led to the alter, an eclipse of the sun occurs, and, thinking the sun god has been appeased, the Mayans end the sacrifices for the day.

The tribal people left unsacrificed are led to a field where they slave traders intend to fire arrows into them. Jaguar Paw, however, after killing the son of the head slave trader, manages to escape, and a long chase begins through the jungle.

The remaining bulk of the movie consists of this chase, and this is the best part.

I mean, a man gets his friggin' face eaten of by a jaguar, and another man gets impaled in the chest by a tapir trap.

It is glory.

It is godly.

It is all that is man.

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