One of Sci-fi finest hours

Rating: 10/10 (23 December 2001)

there're some SPOILERS herein. they're very mild if you ask me and nevertheless it depends of what you consider a spoiler. i won't give explicitly away any important details of the plot but you don't have to be einstein to deduce some from my words. you have been warmed.
12 monkeys is a product of the same twisted imagination who brought you time bandits and brazil. terry gilliam's visual esplendour is all you've heard and more. if a movie if the sum of its parts, then 12 monkeys is near-perfect. if a movie must be considered on its whole, then 12 monkeys keeps being near-perfect.
i don't know where to begin to describe the cast. can you imagine vertigo without jimmy stewart and kim novak? neither can i. nor i can imagine 12 monkeys without bruce willis and the always wonderful madeleine stowe. brad pitt is in this movie, too, in case you haven't heard... and he gives his best performance ever, so does willis. quite frankly, i think willis should have been nominated for an academy award for his work here. forget zemeckis' death was her and shymalan's unbreakable (though the latter is a great movie, too), james cole is the best character willis has ever played. he's a convict with a violent past who gets dragged in a mission he didn't ask for. he's a loner, if you will; but not your normal loner, he's got some real issues. he doesn't want to save the world, he wants to survive, maybe to get a better life in a better time. we could say he's under strong emotional stress... willis reflects this with utter perfection. some detractors of him say he has always the same facial expression. well, for this movie that expression is just right. pitt's part is way easier- he just plays a loon. however, he nails it. pitt's anti fans may argue he achieves that by just playing himself... it may true, but it doesn't matter.
the plot, and the development of it, is mind blowing. i know that's an adjective used for special effects, but i'm unable to think of a better way to describe the non-linear, carefully crafted storyline. the screenplay is full of wonderful details and scenes which play with our perception. but that's one of the film 's premises- should we trust our perception? this quite dickian theme is central to the film plot as it plays with the phycological effects of time travel. that's why the scientists of the future (the "present" ;)) need someone tough. but no one is tough enough to endure being send back to world war one by mistake and before that to a sanatorium. as in gilliam's own brazil, the only way of being happy is by becoming mad. because being a lunatic is so easy, it becomes the utmost escapism because what lies ahead is awful. so we are witnesses of a quixotesque relationship between willis' cole and stowe's phyquiatrist. at the beginning of the film the phyquiatrist naturally doesn't believe cole. why should her? as the film develops she's eventually forced to believe what cole says, but this happens just when cole decides to assume he would be better off as a lunatic. wonderful stuff.
there's, too, a romantic element in the movie, vital to the plot. as the rest of the film, it's wonderfully carried out, and it's crucially connected to the rest of the storyline. in fact, some may argue it's the the central part of the storyline.
in short, this is an intelligent and peculiar film. one not to miss.
10 out of 10.