A virtuoso examination of the "new religion" of psychiatry--in which reality ain't what it seems.

Rating: Null/10 (10 September 1999)

[ Editor: SPOILER ALERT. This comment contains what can considered spoilers]
One of the pleasures of working on films for the "after-markets" is in being able to look at them over and over again. On beautifully crafted films like "12 Monkeys," it is rewarding each time I see it.
One of the remarkable things about this particular film is that Madeline Stowe's character and Bruce Willis' character, in a sense, exchange identities.
Willis' character, Cole, is sent back in time to find out how a deadly virus is to be released, and meets Stowe's character, Reilly, who is a psychiatrist and a researcher. She's convinced he's insane, but knows she's met him before. Cole, having come from a penal colony that lives underground, adores the freedoms his time-travel allows him,and desperately wants to stay with Reilly, who lives above ground. Cole believes that Reilly can make him whole, can cure him of the rootlessness that time-travel has created within him, and concedes that she must be right. He must be insane.
When he explains his mission to her, she, of course, thinks he's nuts. But as they spend time together, she becomes aware that he knows things that only someone from the future would know. But how did he get a World War I bullet in his leg? And how does he know about the "Army of the 12 Monkeys?" She remembers seeing his face in a photograph from 75 years earlier...
When she calls his bluff and makes a phone call to a voice-mail machine that collects messages for the "scientists of the future," she thinks that it's Cole's insane delusion. All she hears is an answering machine for a carpet cleaning company. Her clinical instincts are confirmed. Cole is nuts. Her grasp on the situation is secure.
But, in a brilliantly played twist, when she reports back to Cole, who has been waiting on the street, Cole recites back everything she's said--word for word, finally convincing her that he is not of this world. Both Reilly's clinical rationalism, and Cole's desperate desire to feign insanity so as to stay with her, are both shattered. She joins him in what to her must be insanity. Instead, they have to face the central issue.
The worst imaginable disasters can happen simply because individuals have free will. Rationalism falls apart.