about the plot and the Macguffin

Rating: Null/10 (21 April 2002)

There have been many reviews expressing a confused plot and characters. I agree to this when I first saw this movie some years ago. But recently when I read the script of the movie, I realized that the script was meticulously written and events are inter-related. Actually for the story of 12 monkeys, it's better "to read" then "to watch" as you can have time to digest the "present", "past" and "future" as well as flipping over what the characters have said.
As mentioned in IMDB, this film has many hidden hints to hitchcock movies. I would regard the title as a macguffin as the 12 monkeys is not actually related to the fate of mankind, but it remains a key element to link up the past and present, and to the characters in the movie, a hidden thing that they were chasing after. This resembles the uranium bottles in "notorious".