A masterpiece from Gilliam

Rating: 10/10 (4 May 2009)

Terry Gilliam is no usual film maker. His movies are always mind-bending and thought-provoking. Sometimes his style is hard to understand but in "Twelve Monkeys" (1995) he hits a home run.
The movie sets in then future, to the year 1997. A virus has killed 5 billion people which is almost all of human race. A convict, James Cole (Bruce Willis) is helping some scientist to solve the mystery of twelve monkeys and prevent the horrible future. The film jumps trough times as James travels in time. Gilliam has hooking film techniques that the movie opens piece by piece to the audience. The plot could have been difficult to follow but Gilliam clearly has skills in story-telling. The story is menacing picture of the future. It isn't hard to relate to the scary image of "Twelve Monkeys" because of the what is happening for example in Mexico these days. It is just terrible to think what kind of future is ahead of us. With watching "Twelve Monkeys" horrible thoughts are not so easy to forget.
Alas "Twelve Monkeys" is very recommendable, psychological thriller. Brad Pitt makes by far his best role as Jeffrey Goines. The performance earned him a academy award nomination. Also other cast is in order including Willis, Madeleine Stowe, David Morse and Christopher Plummer.