Subject: REVIEW: 12 MONKEYS

From: [email-masked] (Ram Samudrala)
Date: 19 Jan 1996 20:09:42 GMT

12 MONKEYS
                       A film review by Ram Samudrala
                        Copyright 1996 Ram Samudrala

/12 Monkeys/ addresses, among other things, the paradoxical nature of
time travel (and time travel movies) in a parodoxical way.  The movie
is highly circular and incestuous: It is the year 2035.  A deadly
virus (unleashed in 1996) has destroyed most of the world's
population, enabling the animals to rule the world again.  The human
survivors move deep underground and build their cities there; cities
that seem to be mostly composed of prison guards and prison convicts.

James Cole (Bruce Willis) plays a prison convict/time traveller from
this dystopian future who "volunteers" to be sent back to 1996 in
order to allow his virus-ravaged world to move back to the surface.
He cannot change the events of his past.  All he has to do is bring
back a pure sample of the virus so his people can overcome it and
become the rulers of the planet.

However, time travel in the year 2035 isn't perfect yet (probably
because they have ex-insurance agents in charge of it).  The first
time he is sent back, he ends up in the year 1990, where he is
promptly put in an asylum.  He then meets two of the people who play
key roles in the destruction of the human life on this planet: his
psychiatrist Kathryn Reilly (Madeline Stowe) and co-asylum inmate
Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt).

The plot is set up so it looks as though Cole is responsible for
Doomsday. His ramblings about the virus influences Goines' plans, once
his father (the Nobel prize winning virologist whose lab
coincidentally keeps an amply stock of the deadly virus at hand) gets
him out of the asylum.  Goines then goes on to become the leader of
the Army of the 12 Monkeys, who the people in 2035 believe are the
ones responsible for unleasing the virus.

Meanwhile, the scientists in Cole's future bring him back and have
another go at putting him in the right year.  This time, after a
couple of bumps (notably one in WWI where Cole is shot in the leg), he
ends up in the right year where he once again ends up with Reilly and
manages to convince her of his story.  However, Reilly's psychiatry
and the continuous time travel appears to have taken its toll on Cole,
and when he is brought back to 2035 and sent back to 1996 again, he is
convinced that he is just a mental patient with delusions about the
future.  This time, however, Reilly convinces him otherwise and
together they try to stop the Army of the 12 Monkeys.

History can lie. Cole discovers this (in 1996) and passes this on to
the future (2035) and becomes a hero.  At this point, there are
numerous options to end the story after tieing up the lose ends.  But
the story is left very open-ended and the issue of whether there are
more loops in the future and the question whether the past can really
be changed is left unexplained and unanswered.

Viewers of this movie may recall a /Star Trek: The Next Generation/
episode where the Enterprise is caught is a time loop of destruction,
and each time the crew travels back through time, they experience a
deja vu sensation that finally allows them to break out of the
destructive loop.  The memory Kathyrn Reilly experiences, that she has
seen James Cole before, could be one such instance.  Thus viewers who
like happy endings may wish to imagine another loop where Reilly and
Cole actually manage to save the world.  Viewers who like complete
endings may wish to imagine that the people in 2035 were eventually
able to go back to the surface with Cole's help.  Cynical viewers may
opt for an ending where nothing changes and everything the people in
2035 do ends up being futile.

While the main focus of this review is on the plot itself, the movie
is worth watching for its amazing cinematography, excellent acting by
all the people involved, and the sci-fi effects. 

[email-masked]  ||  http://www.ram.org  ||  http://www.twisted-helices.com/th