Brad Pitt is truly amazing! The movie is truly weird!

Rating: 5/10 (13 October 2007)

The first time that I saw this movie, I didn't like it at all. Most of it was too bizarre for me to understand what was going on right then. I must have been too young for this kind of thing. Many years later I tried again and even though the movie made a lot more sense now, I still think it's pretty weak. The ending is a surprise and a beautiful one at that, but after more than an hour you're fed up with traveling back and forth between the past and the future. It becomes a bit tiresome to me. After a while I stopped caring whether or not Bruce Willis would complete his mission.
Luckily there is still the fantastic performance of Brad Pitt which was the only thing that kept me awake when the movie hit rock bottom every now and then. He stars as a mentally-ill, manic-depressed patient with a lazy eye and does so incredibly well. His over-the-top yet exceptional acting breaths life into this otherwise pretty lackluster movie and it goes without saying that these vivid moments are also the most interesting ones of the entire motion picture.
Bruce Willis, on the other hand, was handpicked by director Terry Gilliam because he had noticed how Wiliis in the first "Die hard"-movie could play both a tough yet vulnerable character at the same time. And this was exactly what the American director needed for the main part. For the role of the psychiatrist however, Terry Gilliam wanted a beautiful woman with an intelligent appearance in the midst of a devastated world. He chose Madeleine Stowe. I'm not particularly a fan of hers, but she does justice to this role.
In short: A weird and heavy movie that might not always keep your attention despite an amazing Brad Pitt, but be sure to watch the entire film for its unexpected ending.