Another Mind-Blowing Gilliam Extravaganza

Rating: 10/10 (17 March 2011)

"Brazil" director Terry Gilliam really goes off on a tangent with "Twelve Monkeys," an apocalyptic science-fiction, time-travel thriller about an individual from the future sent back to the past a la "The Terminator" to ascertain the origins of a lethal man-made virus that nearly annihilated mankind. An Orwellian dystopia pervades virtually everything nook and cranny of the world in the year 2035. The survivors of humanity have gone into exile in the bowels of the Earth as a result of a devastating disaster that killed five billion people in 1997, and life is no picnic for them. Unlike most squeaky-clean, futuristic sci-fi sagas, "Twelve Monkeys" is anything but sleek, sanitized, and ultra-modern. Instead, life is grungy, and science relies on technology that often malfunctions. Charles Dickens would describe it as 'the worst of times.' Indeed, Gilliam explores many of his favorite trademark themes with "Blade Runner" scenarists David and Janet Peoples in this 131-minute, R-rated film. Not only is the line between reality and illusion thin but also it is never straight. Everything that obsessed Gilliam in his epic, landmark opus "Brazil" is recycled in "Twelve Monkeys," but delivered in a tone that lacks the whimsy of the former film. Just as he mixed up everything to the verge of incomprehensibility, Gilliam keeps us off balance and out-of-kilter with one surprise after another in a storyline as crooked as a dog's hind leg. For example, our hero is sent into the past three times and two of those times he winds up in the wrong era.
A shaven-headed, abject-looking, but pugnacious Bruce Willis stars as James Cole. (Oh, my God, check out those symbolic initials!) Cole weathers as much flak from the people in from his own time period as he does from the people in the past. Although he embarks on this odyssey as a sane person, he winds up doubting his own insanity by the time he reaches the right time period. The scientists recruited Cole for their scientific voyage in time because he possesses remarkable powers of observation. The scientists themselves look like they are on a weekend pass from the loony bin. Madeleine Stowe plays Dr. Kathryn Railly, a sympathetic psychiatrist from the 20th century who comes to Cole's aid after he is arrested and chained up in a Philadelphia Police station. She gets in committed to a mental institution that makes "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest" look like a resort. Predictably, when Cole tries to convince Railly and her provincial labcoated colleagues that he has come from the future, they diagnose him as delusional. During his brief incarceration in the mental ward, Cole runs into a harmless, babbling lunatic played by Brad Pitt in a bravura performance that garnered him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. An animal rights activist, Jeffrey Goines (Pitt) assembles the eponymous army that Cole believes will usher in worldwide chaos and destruction. Incredibly, Jeffrey masterminds Cole's escape from the asylum. Christopher Plummer is cast as famous viral researcher Dr. Leland Goines who happens to be his father. Plummer adopts a magnolia-dripping Southern drawl that Pitt doesn't imitate. Haunting the periphery of this warped, psychological vortex, is Plummer's research assistant David Morse, who has more to do with the outcome that you initially believe because he doesn't garner as much screen-time as his co-stars. Frank Gorshin appears in a supporting role as Railly's superior. Ostensibly, Gilliam drew inspiration for "Twelve Monkeys" from the 27-minute, 1962 French New Wave film "La Jetee." "Twelve Monkeys" isn't an easy movie to understand and its vertiginous plot may leave some viewers baffled as well as frustrated.