A moving tragedy - very good craftsmanship

Rating: 9/10 (3 February 1999)

This beautifully constructed movie is one of the saddest I have seen for a long time.
James Cole (Bruce Willis) lives in a prison cell in a world where there is only 1% left of the current population. People live underground then to hide from the virus that killed the others; the earth belongs to the animals once more. Cole is used by a bunch of pretty weird scientists to gather more information about the virus for which they are trying to create an innoculation. One way of doing this is by sending him back through time to get more information.
There is one mistake I think in the time travel element of the movie: when Kathryn makes her phone call to the future, the content of that call is already known to Cole, who has had it played back to him. But a second call, that he himself makes later on in the movie, hasn't been received in the future until he makes the actual call. This seemed inconsistent in an otherwise very solid plot. The acting was reasonable but not amazing, I thought Brad Pitt wasn't that convincing, but the performance of Bruce Willis and most of all one particular red-haired man really impressed me.
Oh but forget about this chatter and go see the movie - it's a masterpiece.