12 Monkeys Film Review

12 Monkeys film Review – Directed by Terry Gillian In Twelve Monkeys, James Cole (Bruce Willis) – a convict – travels unpredictably through time, moving backwards from 2035. In that year, as the film starts off, civilization has been forced to colonize underground by the aftermath of a virus. Only 1% of the world’s human population remains in 1997, and now animals thrive in the wreckage of abandoned cities. Below Philadelphia, the underground city is controlled by scientists who have made James Cole their research item.

Cole is sent from the future back to pre-apocalyptic times. He is a frightened prisoner who is forced to find where the deadly virus originated. He goes back to several different points in time, first arriving in 1990, however as he gets there he is sent to a mental hospital where many other people are just as crazy as him. One of them is Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt). Goines goes on to lead a guerrilla band of animal-rights advocates called the Army of the 12 Monkeys.

The Army of the 12 Monkeys is important to the plot as they are as a big red herring, making you think that they are the ones that released the virus, but in fact all their mission was just to free the animals from the zoo. 12 monkeys also features Dr Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe) as a psychiatrist who stays with James long enough to learn that his symptoms are not so easily ignored. She treats him as a patient in Baltimore in 1990, and she is kidnapped by him there again in 1996.

Cole tells her that he was at World War, which she later finds out is true, which means she is forced to believe that Cole isn’t delusional. This movie takes a grim look at a futuristic, post-apocalyptic world where the only possible solution to survival is to send someone into the past. The mood is crazy, dark and unpredictable. I would rate his movie 4. 5 out of 5 stars, and would recommend it to anyone over the age of 12 so long as they have the requisite and understanding to follow this work of genius.