If everything is pre-destined, what is the point of effort?

Rating: 10/10 (21 May 2004)

I hadn't seen this movie for years, but remembered it fondly without really remembering what I liked about it. On re-watching it, I realized that this is truly a great film, dealing with a lot more than just the old who decides who is insane question. One of the major themes is that even though humanity has developed far superior technology by 2035, it's being run by the same incompetent bureaucracy we've had since the time of Caesar. In one scene, when Bruce Willis has been returned to his own time after finding the information he was sent to find, his superiors are behaving so bizarrely that he begins to believe, and the audience along with him, that maybe he really is insane and the entire future world is just a hallucination. This movie plays fair by the rule that nothing in the past can be changed, and most of the action takes place in the past of 1990 or 1996. Bruce is sent back not to prevent the spread of the virus, but just to retrieve a sample of it so that scientists in the future can develop a cure for it. The cinematography is a tour-de-force of point of view work. When Willis is first admitted to the mental institution, drugged up and disoriented in time, no shot is fully perpendicular, no composition balanced. Brad Pitt is a wonder as one of the mental ward patients. He's completely manic and full of energy. He's the first clue in the movie as to why it might be called 12 monkeys. My test of a good movie is always whether I want to see it again. This is especially true of a Chinese-puzzle movie like this. Once you know how it ends, is there any interest in watching again. In this case the answer is certainly. Willis says to Madeleine Stowe while they're watching "Vertigo" that visiting the past is like watching an old movie. You can't change the way it comes out, but you notice different details. This movie is so rich in details and ideas that it will stand up to many viewings.