Twelve Monkeys stars Bruce Willis as Cole,
a man living in the year 2035 as a member of the 1% of the population left on
Earth, thanks to a mystery virus which swept the planet back in 1997 killing
five billion people, leaving the survivors no choice but to abandon the
surface leaving the animals to rule the world once again.
The film begins with Cole as a child at the airport hearing a gunshot and seeing
a long-haired man keel over, closely followed by a blonde woman screaming and
running over to help him. Then we're back to the present as Cole wakes up,
his job as a 'volunteer' to take samples on the surface of the planet for
analysis.
Events take Cole back in time to April 12th, 1990, where he becomes a mental
patient at Baltimore County Hospital, the doctors, including Dr. Kathryn Railly,
played by Madeline Stowe, not understanding his ramblings about the
world and its impending doom, although one of his fellow 'inmates' Jeffrey,
played brilliantly by a psychotic Brad Pitt seems to appear in full
agreement with him. After another chain of events, Cole is thrust forward to
1996 where he comes across Dr. Railly and Jeffrey again, and sees it as his
destiny to find out what killed the planet's populaion, and just what the
mysterious Army of the 12 Monkeys have to do with all of this. Can he
succeed? In a typical Hollywood film you might say yes, but with director
Terry Gilliam at the helm, nothing is typical, or predictable.
This film has so much going for it, that there's no way it can fail as superb
entertainment, keeping Bruce Willis in the actor's A-list, and as he proved in
Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, he's an all-round actor who can apply
himself to much more than a straight-forward action role.
Madeline Stowe serves adequately in the role as the good doctor, but Brad
Pitt, in a role which earned him an Oscar nomination, is excellent as the
psyched-out mental patient who helps Bruce Willis escape from the institution,
only to be captured again...
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