"The future will be better tomorrow."
-- Dan Quayle
-- Dan Quayle
If I told you there was a sci-fi movie released in 1995 that said 5 billion people would die of a virus in 1997, you would think it must be terrible. 12 Monkeys is that rare exception where a movie that dates itself with that short of a shelf life still holds up. Sure, you're going to have to ignore the years used, but once you do, you'll see that it's a rare pairing of good casting and the perfect director for the plot.
Terry Gilliam was steampunk before it was cool. The movie opens in a dystopian future, where humans have fled underground to escape the deadly virus that almost wiped out humanity, and decontamination and social order are prized above all else. Any trips to the surface require a lot of airtight layers, and are only undertaken to gather specimens that might help the "scientists" find a cure. "Scientists" is in quotes because there's almost a caste system at work, where the intellectuals are referred to as scientists though their qualifications are dubious. Bruce Willis is a prisoner in this underground society, and in order to reduce his sentence, volunteers to be sent back in time to try to gather the "pure" virus which is needed to make a vaccine and return humanity to the surface. It's made clear very early that the past is the past and nothing can be changed, he's merely an observer.
Once in the past, he meets a mental patient, brilliantly played by Brad Pitt, and a psychiatrist played by Madeleine Stowe, who gets billing over Brad Pitt here, but in typical Hollywood fashion, she's been churned under to make way for younger actresses, so she's probably an unfamiliar name to modern audiences. Together, over the years leading up to 1997 (Willis is pulled forward in time periodically to report before being sent back, allowing him to skip years of Pitt and Stowe's lives) they reveal what set the virus in motion.
Once in the past, he meets a mental patient, brilliantly played by Brad Pitt, and a psychiatrist played by Madeleine Stowe, who gets billing over Brad Pitt here, but in typical Hollywood fashion, she's been churned under to make way for younger actresses, so she's probably an unfamiliar name to modern audiences. Together, over the years leading up to 1997 (Willis is pulled forward in time periodically to report before being sent back, allowing him to skip years of Pitt and Stowe's lives) they reveal what set the virus in motion.
Bruce Willis is surprisingly fantastic as the protagonist growing more confused about reality even as Stowe begins to doubt that he's crazy. Brad Pitt steals every scene he's in as an eco-terrorist conspiracy nut, and greatly deserved the Academy Award nomination he received for his supporting role. If he hadn't been going against the Keyser Söze juggernaut of Kevin Spacey in Usual Suspects, he would've won it. If the movie had been released a year either side of 1995, he would've cruised past Cuba Gooding Jr. (Jerry Maguire), or Martin Landau (Ed Wood).
Reminiscent of his work on Brazil, Gilliam's future is full of distinctly low-tech-looking high-tech. The time machine used to send Willis back is made mostly of plastic and electric clips that would look more at home as a painter's drop cloth and jumper cables respectively. The whole atmosphere adds to the audience's confusion on whether or not Willis is just insane. Exploring themes of time-travel, paradoxes, and fate, 12 Monkeys is a must-see for any sci-fi fan.
Reminiscent of his work on Brazil, Gilliam's future is full of distinctly low-tech-looking high-tech. The time machine used to send Willis back is made mostly of plastic and electric clips that would look more at home as a painter's drop cloth and jumper cables respectively. The whole atmosphere adds to the audience's confusion on whether or not Willis is just insane. Exploring themes of time-travel, paradoxes, and fate, 12 Monkeys is a must-see for any sci-fi fan.
Thanks to Gilliam's touches, the audience is never quite sure what they're seeing, and that's a good thing