Subject: Retrospective: 12 Monkeys (1996)

From: [email-masked] (Michael Redman)
Date: 1 May 1998 05:05:47 GMT

12 Monkeys
A Film Review By Michael Redman
Copyright 1996 By Michael Redman

**** (out of ****)
 
Terry Gilliam’s latest is a slam bang science fiction tour de force. Drawing
from the same deep swirling pool of inspiration that he did for "Brazil", the
former Monty Python member has another winner – at least for some of us.

Like most of his films, this is one of those “love it or hate it”s. Some will
find it brilliant, dark but dazzling. Others will find it tedious, dark but
dazzling. 

I’ve heard the plot referred to as confusing by some, but to anyone who’s
well-versed with time travel story lines, the themes are familiar. Bruce
Willis is incarcerated in a hell hole of a prison in the future where the
entire human population lives underground because of a deadly virus that
covers the planet surface. “Volunteering” (more like being chosen by a giant
grab-a-toy-with-the-claw machine) to be sent into the past, he gets a chance
at freedom.

His mission is to return to 1996 and find a pure strain of the virus so the
scientists of the future can return the people to the surface. Their time
travel device, like many of the futuristic artifacts (which look as if they
were borrowed from <I>Brazil<I>), isn’t exactly high tech and only gets him to
the right time after sending him first to 1990 and then W.W.I. During his stay
in 1990, he is thrown into a mental institution where he meets Brad Pitt.
Finally making it to the right time, he finds that Pitt is head of the animal
rights group Army Of The 12 Monkeys, the organization thought to be
responsible for unleashing the virus.

Bouncing back and forth from the future to our time and back again, Willis
follows clues from incomplete historical records trying to find the virus only
to discover that he, himself is the cause of most of the clues. 

Come to think of it, the plot is somewhat convoluted, but in the end
everything makes sense. Well, almost everything. The real key to the ending is
the insurance salesperson sitting next to the red-haired scientist on an
airplane. Which time period is she from?

There has been much talk about how this is a new groundbreaking role for
Willis. In truth, it’s not. He plays the same character that he has for years:
tough guy beaten down time after time only to rise back up, bloody and broken,
to go after the bad guys once again. The difference here is that he is even
better at it than ever before. Willis may only play one role, but he’s got
that one down cold.

The surprise is Brad Pitt. Looking nothing like the Fabio clone from previous
films, he is masterful as the insane prisoner turned ecoterrorist mastermind.
Maybe he’s more than just a pretty face after all.

[This appeared in the 1/17/96 "Bloomington Voice", Bloomington, Indiana.
Michael Redman can be contacted at [email-masked]]

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