Visually and intellectually complex

Rating: 9/10 (4 October 1999)

Properly speaking this should be called "The Army of the Twelve Monkeys." It only takes twelve, strategically placed throughout the world, to kill five billion people with a mutant virus. (Actually glass canisters are used.)
The central character, James Cole, played with heavyweight restraint by Bruce Willis, is a convict from the future where the survivors live underground, leaving the surface to the animals. He and other nonconformists live in cages and are made to "volunteer" to go back in time to search for the original virus before it mutated in 1996. Problem is they keep getting the destination year screwed up. Once they send him to 1917 and land him naked in the middle of a battle from World War I, where he gets shot in the leg. Another time they send him to 1990 where he ends up in a mental institution and meets attractive co-star Madeleine Stowe, who plays psychiatrist Dr. Kathryn Railly, leading to an interesting subplot: shrink falls in love with her mentally disturbed patient. Brad Pitt entertains as Jeffrey Goines, a hyperactive nut case, son of a sick virologist, and leader of an animal rights activist group. He is crazy/wise.
The film is heavily populated by unfeeling, semi-competent scientists, mental patients and their caretakers. There are all sorts of apocalyptic fools ranting and raving about the end of the world, etc. Most of human society as we know it is in shadow, off camera. There's an understandable terror of psychoactive drugs among the patients. Thorazine in particular is mentioned. Cole's body is continually being assaulted by hypodermics, electrodes, the fists and boots of the guards and other hard objects. His face is continually smeared with blood. One gets the idea that director Terry Gilliam had a bad dream and wanted to share.
Regardless, this brooding, atmospheric yarn is the best cinematic sci-fi I have seen since Blade Runner (1982); and it is no co-incidence that it was scripted in part by the gifted David Peoples who helped write the screen play for Blade Runner. Never mind that time travel to the past is an absurdity. We're forced to rise above that because Gilliam presents time similar to the way Kurt Vonnegut did in his novel Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), namely that all time is happening "simultaneously" and especially right now, forever.
We are reminded that time is an illusion. Our experience and perception of time is, as it were, linear, allowing us a comprehension of "time" similar to what two-dimensional creatures might have of three dimensional space. "Time" does not exist. It is a construct from the way we compare events. Notice that when James Cole dies Dr. Railly is not sad because Cole lives on in the person of his younger self, the child at the airport watching his death. This will be the case for eternity.
There are some funny bits in the script. After Cole beats up the pimp to save Dr. Railly, and forces a trade of teeth (to evade the trackers implanted in his teeth), and the cops come, the pimp says, all hurt, "I was attacked by a coked-up whore and a crazy dentist." Another nice touch is to have the virologist father of crazy/visionary Jeffrey Goines sound like a southern politician instead of your usual mad scientist. I also liked it when psychiatrist Dr. Kathryn Railly said, "Psychiatry is the latest religion...I'm in trouble. I'm losing my faith." She's right: psychiatry and clinical psychology in general is a secular religion less than two hundred years old that we as a society ought to regard with suspicion.
In short this is not your usual Bruce Willis outing. The action/adventure stuff is secondary to story and character development and to the social and political statements of the film, the more important of which is to protest the suppression of the individual by the larger society. The forces of evil really are those who dictate what is normal and those who enforce conformity. This film is commercially successful because many young people, corporate cogs, and the underclass feel oppressed by the constraints of society and can readily identify with Cole's struggle. What is worse, Thorazine and Prozac or marijuana and beer? Anyone who identified even in the slightest with this film can answer that question.
The second statement is that humans are ruining the planet and should be killed to save the animals. This melancholy idea is not so far-fetched. That some cult of nuts (or visionaries, as you like) might someday infect humanity with a deadly virus so that the flora and fauna of the planet might resume their natural state is at least plausible.
(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)