I'm in insurance.

Rating: 8/10 (3 December 2015)

It is 2027, and the last of mankind has been forced underground into a makeshift colony. The production design shows us the worst of this, in the tiny prison cells, and it is reminiscent of Gilliam's dystopic Brazil, but without the towering skyscrapers and ministerial buildings locked up in infrastructure and bureaucratic messes; this future is grimy and claustrophobic. Up above, city halls and apartment buildings lay in dilapidated ruin in the snow, they leak liberally, and lions roar from corner rooftops while bears lurk below. There is less of a satirical and absurdist edge that we usually see from Gilliam in this bleak future vision, although the same stylistic devices remain; the use of a Fresnel lens warps and distorts the multiple faces of the scientists on the television screen, the wide angle lenses do the same as Cole's POV is interrogated in a mental institution bed by the past doctors, and the camera swivels around, disorientating us in the same way that Cole and his good friend Jeffrey Goines is, with overhead and dutch angles that lurk voyeuristically around, over and behind the mental patients..perhaps in some instances overly so.
And there is also the dream sequence that plagues Cole throughout the film and his mission. Against the grimy backdrop of past and present, this particular scene is at a airport, and is in slow motion, but more frantic than anything else, and is bright and overexposed to haunting effect, until we are very sure that this is the setting of the climax. Something must be prevented. But 12 Monkeys constantly reiterates that the past cannot be changed, and so Cole is sent back not to prevent a calamity, but to ensure that the present day survivors have a chance of retaking the surface once again, to insure that possibility. He is sent back naked, but he is not the Terminator, cold and ruthless, but his ramblings and panicked foretelling of the coming disaster mistaken for psychotic delusions, and it is clever that Gilliam manages to make these interrogations and psychiatric evaluations so mundane, like they are lifted from any run of the mill police procedural as the detectives check out potential suspects (and there is almost always a deluded mental patient), and thus so terrifying because Cole's mission is compromised and no one is aware of the impending doom.
He is shacked up with fellow mental patient Jeffrey Goines, in what is perhaps Brad Pitt's finest performance. His first words include being bribed by one of the carers with an imaginary five thousand dollars, and then he commences his grand tour of the facility, and it is wonderful how he manages to create a character so assured yet so obviously troubled. His rapid fire dialogue keys us into his nervousness as well as little clues of his family and intentions, he repeats phrases again and again, his facial tics of jerks of the head and crazy wide eyed smile present the perfect red herring for the biological virus releaser of the future. Now and then he will release in a burst of anger that hints at darkness beneath him, but it is the small scene of David Morse hidden early in the scene which reveals the real perpetrator.
This is a well written time travel thriller, because it is not an easy concept to write about and construct a narrative around, having the need to construct and reinforce its own restrictions, and maintaining a sort of tension that in normal stories cannot be resolved by the ability to do it all over again. It doesn't lean on its twist reveals of Cole's origin and the Army of the 12 Monkeys' role, but they are cleverly done; a forensic report of an antique bullet, the repetition of a key covert phrase, and the reveal of a secret mission through a normal taxi conversation and the sight of giraffes ambling down the highway. Willis makes the plot frantic, because he is so sure of his mission and then he is confined, and then haunted by distorted voices in his head that make him question his whole identity and purpose altogether. We see the remnants of a lost world so clearly as he sticks his head outside the car window like a dog, breathing in the fresh and clean air, and treasuring the sound of music long lost, and it is tragic that we see that same person in his young self, seeing his own death, but not quite understanding. The ending is powerfully quiet; this calamity has already occurred, and will always occur no matter how many trips to the past they make, but perhaps there is a chance of revival.