Timeless, beautiful masterpiece from Terry Gilliam

Rating: 10/10 (18 September 2015)

Terry Gilliam's masterwork Twelve Monkeys is in my opinion the best of his films, and my favourite time travel movie of all time. Gilliam has a limitless, childlike imagination that surges forward in any project he helms, and this one thrums with a futuristic, fable like aura that pulls you in wonderfully. Bruce Willis, in a remarkably focused, wounded portrayal, plays James Cole, a convict in a derelict underground dystopia. Mankind has been forced down there following a dead global contagion that wiped out the majority of life on the surface. Cole receives a mission from the pseudo government down there: be sent back in time to research what caused the outbreak, and bring information back. Only problem is, he's sent way too far back, to 1994, before the incident. He winds up in a mental institution under the care of gentle, understanding Doctor Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe). No one believes his story, and pretty soon, even he starts to have doubts about his own sanity. Brad Pitt plays fellow inmate Jeffrey Goines, a lunatic who figures in the story later. Pitt has never been better, positively frothing at the mouth like a rabid chimpanzee, prancing around with virile madness, crazily present in every moment of his fantastic performance. Willis drops his smirking antihero presence for a simmering vulnerability that gives the piece it's unique heartbeat. There's welcome turns from Jon Seda, David Morse Frank Gorshin and Christopher Plummer as well. Gilliam spins the story to some truly unexpected places, giving us a hard hitting character study and a madcap sci fi adventure with surprisingly down to earth storytelling for such a genre, and a melancholic sensibility that keeps you in the film's mood long after you have finished it. A classic.