So much Terry Gilliam originality and great Brad Pitt

Rating: 9/10 (13 November 2014)

This movie opens with "... 5 Billion People Will Die From A Deadly Virus in 1997 ... The Survivors Will Abandon The Surface of The Planet ... Once Again The Animals Will Rule The World ..." - Excerpts from Interview with clinically diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, April 12, 1990 Baltimore County Hospital.
In a dystopic near-future, criminal James Cole (Bruce Willis) is forced to volunteer to go up to the surface and collect samples. He is given the opportunity to reduce his 25 to life sentence by time-traveling to 1996 and gather information on the Army of the Twelve Monkeys. Back in 1990 Baltimore, county psychiatrist Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe) is brought in to examine James Cole after a fight with 2 cops. He is locked up in the county sanatorium where he meets manic babbling Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt). He pleads to make a telephone call but the time hasn't come yet. He's suppose to be in 1996. Meanwhile he keeps having flashbacks of an incident as a kid. The future pulls him back but he's thrown back into the wrong time period again. When he finally arrives in the right time, he kidnaps Kathryn Railly.
This is chalk full of Terry Gilliam goodness originality. I love the craziness. I love his style. This is the closest to portraying madness coherently on the big screen. Bruce Willis inhabits the regular guy under stress and then there is the wild madness coming from Brad Pitt. Madeleine Stowe is also terrific. I love the various settings. I love the crazy future. I love the decaying present. I love the asylum. I love it all.