12 Monkeys Review

Written by: Ash's missing hand   

12 Monkeys is a very ambitious movie. It is co-written by David Peoples, who wrote Blade Runner. The movie is set in 1990 and 1996, and is about a time traveler trying to save the world from a deadly plague.

The time traveler is Cole (Bruce Willis), who lives with a handful of survivors in an underground shelter. The surface of the Earth has been reclaimed by animals, after the death of five billion people in a plague in 1996. Cole is sent on a surface expedition by the rulers, who hope to learn enough about the pague to defeat it. Later he is enlisted for his most crucial mission: Travel back in time and gather information about the virus before it mutated.

Cole arrives in 1990 bruised, bleeding, and dripping with sweat and snot. He is thrown in jail and assigned a psychiatrist. Dr. Kathryn Railly (Madeline Stowe) believes he is delusional when he says he is from the future. He pulls off an impossible jail break, and reappears to her in 1996, and kidnaps her to help him find the twelve monkeys in Philadelphia that have the virus in its "pure" form before it mutated.

Cole learns that a mental patient named Jeffrey (Brad Pitt), who he met in 1990, is an animal rights activist with a father (Christopher Plummer) whose lab may contain the deadly virus.

This movie is a celebration of madness and doom. It is cold, dark, and done very, very well. I still feel Brad Pitt deserved Oscar consideration for his work in this movie.