story vs artistic vision

Rating: 7/10 (4 June 2011)

This is the type of movie that suffers from a clash of imagination and story telling. At the heart of this movie is an interesting take on time travel that suffers from the fact that the director's vision drew from the simplicity and elegance of the story. I want to love Gilliam, but it is not an easy task.
The story is a fairly simple tale of time travel that ends with a sufficient number of twists and turns to make it interesting and to keep the audience guessing. The execution of that story on the other hand left me unsatisfied. There were certain aspects of the movie and specifically themes that I wish the director emphasized more. The idea that Cole could have been crazy and that everything was just in his head was barely touched upon and when it was it seemed like it was tacked on. I thought that one of the main ideas was that Cole could not change the past and that we would be forced to live the nightmare over and over again was not emphasized enough.
Instead of making sure that the themes emerged it seems that Gilliam decided to focus on more visually inventive aspects of the movie. I did enjoy the design of the future, but it was too stylized for it to fit the rest of the story. The present wasn't overly stylized so it did not seem like the future fit into the same universe as the present.
The acting was really good and I really enjoyed watching Brad Pitt play against type. Willis was good, but there was nothing special. Stowe on the other hand I thought was perfect. She was sympathetic all the while being strong willed. There is a beauty that radiates from her eyes and I would to see her some more dramatic roles.
There are some strong points for this movie and it was definitely a Gilliam film. I do not think he had to compromise his artistic vision too much, which I believe hurt the movie. I do love time travel movies, but there was not a lot of connections of the present to the future, which took away from the fact that it was a time travel movie.