L'esercito delle 12 scimmie

In 1996, a deadly virus is released by a terrorist group known as The Army of the Twelve Monkeys and wipes out 5 billion people from Earth and the survivors are forced to live underground.

In 2035, the prisoner James Cole (Bruce Willis) is forced to return to 1996 to find the original virus to help the scientists to research the cure to mankind. However, he is mistakenly sent to 1990 and locked up in a mental institution, where he meets the lunatic Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt). James Cole unsuccessfully tries to explain his assignment to the doctors, including the psychiatrist Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe) that is responsible for his treatment, and then he tries to escape but is incarcerated in a cell. Out of the blue, he vanishes, in the beginning of the incredible journey of James Cole.

"Twelve Monkeys" (1995) is a sci-fi ahead of the time. The plot has many details that requires the viewer to watch this film more than once to fully understand the story. Watching "Twelve Monkeys" again in 2021 is particularly scary in times of the pandemic Covid. Hope that the history does not follow fiction. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "Os 12 Macacos" ("The 12 Monkeys")

Note: On 24 February 2025, I saw this film again.

Normally I try to avoid Sci-Fi movies as much as I can, because this just isn't a genre that really appeals to me. Light sabers, UFO's, aliens, time traveling... most of the time it's nothing for me. However, there is one movie in the genre that I'll always give a place in my list of top movies and that's this "Twelve Monkeys" I remember to be completely blown away by it the first time, but even now, after having it seen several times already, I'm still one of its biggest fans. Every time I see it, this movie seems to get better and better.

Somewhere in the distant future all people live underground because an unknown and lethal virus wiped out five billion people in 1996, leaving only 1 percent of the population alive. James Cole is one of them. He's a prisoner who lives in a small cage and who is chosen as a 'volunteer' to be sent back to in time to gather information about the origin of the epidemic. They believe it was spread by a mysterious group called 'The Twelve Monkeys' and need the virus before it mutated, so that scientists can study it. But their time traveling machine doesn't work perfectly yet and he is accidentally sent to 1990, where he meets Dr. Kathryn Railly, a psychiatrist, and Jeffrey Goines, the insane son of a famous scientist and virus expert...

What I like so much about this movie is the fact that it is never clear whether all what you are seeing is real or not. Is this just an illusion, created in the mind of a mentally ill man or is it real? Does he really come from the future and can he really travel through time? Was the population really wiped out by a virus, released by the army of The Twelve Monkeys? Those are all questions that will leave you wondering from the beginning until the end. If the makers of this movie had chosen to make it all more obvious, I'm sure that I would never have liked it as much as I did now. It's just that mysteriousness that keeps me interested time after time. But that's not the only good thing about this movie of course. The acting is amazing too. Normally I'm not too much a fan of Bruce Willis, but what he did in this movie was just astonishing. Together with Madeleine Stowe and Brad Pitt he should have won several awards for it, because together with the amazing story, they made this movie work so incredibly well.

Even after several viewings, I'm still a huge fan of this movie. Except for this movie, I have only seen one other Terry Gilliam movie and that's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", which wasn't bad, but didn't really convince me either. However, it's this movie that really makes me look forward to his other work. I give it a 9/10, maybe even a 9.5/10.

Terry Gilliam's stunning feature-length adaptation of Chris Marker's short film LA JETEE is full of mind-bending surprises, yet still touches your heart thanks to the superb cast. Gilliam's flair for the phantasmagorical works with the script by David and Janet Peoples to play with your head as much as it does with poor James Cole (Willis at his most Steve McQueen-like -- better than McQueen, even!), a time-traveling convict from the future who literally doesn't know whether he's coming or going as a team of scientists keeps sending him back to the wrong eras while trying to prevent a 1995 plague that's deadly to humans but harmless to animals. Willis, the justifiably Oscar-nominated Brad Pitt, and Madeline Stowe as a well-meaning psychiatrist give some of the best performances of their careers. Even Paul Buckmaster's tango-style score is haunting. This one's a don't-miss!

In the future humans exist underground, the surface having become uninhabitable due to the release of a virus years before in 1996. The ruling classes are scientists and large sections of the population are held as prisoners in tiny cells; prisoners who "volunteer" to help work out what happened back in 1996 that killed off 99% of the population. Requiring information about the visit, James Cole is sent back to 1996 to gather what information he can. However, sent to 1990 by accident, Cole finds himself in a mental hospital where he meets From the very start this film marks itself out as being very much a Terry Gilliam product and those who hate his work will probably dislike this film for the same reason. However, pleasing people like that is not my concern and 12 Monkeys is actually one of Gilliam's most accessible films as it sets his imaginative style within a narrative that is satisfyingly complex and thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish. The story is not perfect though, the connection to the start is nice but the ultimate twist behind the virus just seems to have been thrown in to keep the film tidy; a minor complaint though because even then the main thrust of the story (Cole) keeps it together. The twisting plot plays with both Cole's and our sense of reality and it is genuinely gripping from start to finish Gilliam's direction is superb, whether it be the realistic world of the 1990's filmed with clever angles and shots or the wonderfully twisted world of the future, it is all excellent and was such a pleasant find in my local cinema at the time.

The film benefits from great turns from the cast. Willis was having a bit of a career resurrection in the mid-90's when several films showed us that he could actually act – for me, 12 Monkeys was one of them. Willis is superb as he spins from madness to sanity and back again; he underplays all the way and is so much better than the wise-cracking everyman that he is better known for. Pitt is just as good but in a different way. Getting an Oscar nomination that he deserved, Pitt risks overdoing it but pushes his crazy performance as far as he can without being indulgent – I'm not saying he is perfect but I would could this as one of his best performances to date. Stowe is very much in the shadow of these two but she holds her own well. Morse, Seda, Meloni and Plummer are all good in minor roles but really the film belongs to the lead three – Willis in particular and Pitt in a great supporting role.

Overall this is a great sci-fi; the story is great and is only helped by Gilliam's imaginative direction and awareness of the fantastic. Meanwhile the cast are very strong, with the famous leads giving some of their best performances to date. Downbeat, imaginative, engaging and one of the more accessible of Gilliam's films, it stands out as one of the best American sci-fi's of the past few decades.

There is a story (possibly apocryphal) about an exchange between Bruce Willis and Terry Gilliam at the start of Twelve Monkeys. Gilliam (allegedly) produced a long list (think about the aircraft one from the Fifth Element) and handed it to Butch Bruce. It was entitled "Things Bruce Willis Does When He Acts". It ended with a simple message saying: "please don't do any of the above in my movie".

There is a fact about this movie (definitely true). Gilliam didn't have a hand in the writing.

I would contend that these two factors played a huge role in creating the extraordinary (if not commercial) success that is The Twelve Monkeys.

Visually, the Twelve Monkeys is all that we have rightly come to expect from a Gilliam film. It is also full of Gilliamesque surrealism and general (but magnificent) strangeness. Gilliam delights in wrong-footing his audience. Although the ending of the Twelve Monkeys will surprise no one who has sat through the first real, Gilliam borrows heavily from Kafka in the clockwork, bureaucratic relentless movement of the characters towards their fate. It is this journey, and the character developments they undergo, which unsettles.

I love Gilliam films (Brazil, in particular). But they do all tend to suffer from the same weakness. He seems to have so many ideas, and so much enthusiasm, that his films almost invariably end up as a tangled mess (Brazil, in particular). I still maintain that Brazil is Gilliam's tour de force, but there's no denying that The Twelve Monkey's is a breath of fresh air in the tight-plotting department. Style, substance and form seem to merge in a way not usually seen from the ex-Python.

Whatever the truth of the rumour above, Gilliam also manages to get a first rate (and very atypical) performance out of the bald one. Bruce is excellent in this film, as are all the cast, particularly a suitably bonkers - and very scary - Brad Pitt.

It's been over a decade since this film was released. When I watched it again, I realised that it hadn't really aged. I had changed, of course. And this made me look at the film with fresh eyes. This seems to me to be a fitting tribute to a film that, partly at least, is about reflections in mirrors, altered perspectives and the absurd one-way journey through time that we all make. A first rate film. 8/10.