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List Price: $12.98 | | Label: Universal Studios
Salesrank: 4054
Released: May 10, 2005 |
| Our Price: $5.00 |
| Used Price: $2.30 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
After the world's population is devastated by a killer virus, Cole volunteers to travel into the past to obtain a pure virus sample, thereby helping scientists develop a cure. Along the way, he crosses paths with a beautiful psychiatrist and a mental pati
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 23-MAY-2006
Media Type: DVD
Description of 12 Monkeys (Special Edition):
Inspired by Chris Marker's acclaimed short film La Jetée (which is included on the DVD Short 2: Dreams), 12 Monkeys combines intricate, intelligent storytelling with the uniquely imaginative vision of director Terry Gilliam. The story opens in the wintry wasteland of the year 2035, where a virulent plague has forced humans to live in a squalid, oppressively regimented underground. Bruce Willis plays a societal outcast who is given the opportunity to erase his criminal record by "volunteering" to time-travel into the past to obtain a pure sample of the deadly virus that will help future scientists to develop a cure. But in bouncing from 1918 to the early and mid-1990s, he undergoes an ordeal that forces him to question his own perceptions of reality. Caught between the dangers of the past and the devastation of the future, he encounters a psychiatrist (Madeleine Stowe) who is initially convinced he's insane, and a wacky mental patient (Brad Pitt in a twitchy Oscar-nominated role) with links to a radical group that may have unleashed the deadly virus. Equal parts mystery, tragedy, psychological thriller, and apocalyptic drama, 12 Monkeys ranks as one of the best science fiction films of the '90s, boosted by Gilliam's visual ingenuity and one of the finest performances of Willis's career. --Jeff Shannon
12 Monkeys (Special Edition) Reviews:
Gripping Sci-Fi Intrique! 
2009-10-12 - Science Fiction with time travel and deadly world of germs actually keeps your attention. This is a film that features Bruce Willis (as time traveler from the year 2035) and Brad Pitt (an insane son of a rich influential scientist).
The movie works on all fronts despite a bizarre plot. Terry Cole (Bruce Willis) is a prisoner in the year 2035, where all earthlings must live underground to escape a deadly plague on the earth's surface. Terry is asked to travel back in time to the month before the germs were released and try to change the future. He ends up in a insane asylum in 1990 the first trip. His psychiatrist, Katherine Railly and a friendly inmate Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt) are his main contacts and he feels that they may help him find the clues to the epidemic that killed 5 billion people in 1997.
Original intrigue keeps the audience interested and involved with the surprise ending. Food for thought in our time of worry about pandemics.
Flawed, but enjoyable.
2009-10-08 - I don't write spoiler reviews. It's an OK film. Don't expect Armageddon-quality cinematography. It's lower budget. There are some holes in the plot development. There's also a huge blooper involving the central plot. However, I dig Brucie, & the female lead has pretty eyes... It's enjoyable. I give it a B/B-. Pitt actually does some acting in this. I normally can't stand that guy. Here, his character is pretty funny, though. The director had to have that game "Barrel Full Of Monkeys" when he was a kid. You'll see. Peace.
There's no right, there's no wrong, there's only popular opinion
2009-09-11 - Director Terry Gilliam got his start doing animated shorts for the British comedy program Monty Python and then directing their feature films. An early non-Python project, Brazil, nevertheless contained Python cast members. No pythons were harmed during the making of Twelve Monkeys, but the same can't be said of the audience members. Look at Twelve Monkeys as a cinematic experiment that ultimately failed, but valuable information was gleaned from the experience, mostly about what not to do.
First, if you are going to have a post apocalyptic scenario where all but a small percentage of humans are killed and the ones who survive live like worms underground, don't factor in time travel as a plot device, because it is just not believable that such a society could achieve time travel, given their obvious setbacks. Next, don't cast Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt (more about them later), and third, have a less ambiguous ending, where they either save the world, or not, but don't leave the whole thing unresolved, where you have to question what was the point, if any, of this novel cinematic experience.
I can vouch for Gilliam. Brazil was quite inventive and creative, and The Fisher King was fantastic. Great performances from Robin Williams and Jeff Bridges in The Fisher King, but more important than any individual performance, the movie worked as a whole. Would that the same could be said of Twelve Monkeys.
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James Cole: I'm here about some monkeys.
Jeffrey Goines: Monkeys?
James Cole: Monkeys. Yes. Twelve of them.
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James Cole (Bruce Willis) is a prisoner with a violent past who is 'volunteered' to go back to the past to find out how the deadly epidemic started, and how was the virus spread. He gives his usual smug action hero performance with just a touch of self mockery, to fool you into thinking that he doesn't take himself too serious. But he does take himself way too serious, and so all the smug mugging and ironic winks are for naught. "All I see are dead people," he says at one point. Whatcha talkin' 'bout, Willis? Is this meant to mock his role in The Sixth Sense? If so, then that is a pretty clever little joke -- but not clever enough to save this film.
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James Cole: I'm looking for the Army of the Twelve Monkeys.
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James (Bruce Willis) Cole ends up in a mental institution where he meets Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt). On the way in, we see a television monitor where some of the patients are watching Tex Avery cartoons. This is way too heavy handed symbolism to show that Brad Pitt is going to be acting like a cartoon. Just like Johnny Depp based a character on Pepe La Peu crossed with Keith Richards, it seems that Pitt has a similar design in mind for Jeffrey Goines. Was he trying to simultaneously play both Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd? There were moments of brilliance, but overall it just didn't work. Brad just dug himself deeper and deeper into a Pitt.
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L.J. Washington: I don't really come from outer space.
Jeffrey Goines: Oh. L. J. Washington. He doesn't really come from outer space.
L.J. Washington: Don't mock me my friend. It's a condition of mental divergence. I find myself on the planet Ogo, part of an intellectual elite, preparing to subjugate the barbarian hordes on Pluto. But even though this is a totally convincing reality for me in every way, nevertheless Ogo is actually a construct of my psyche. I am mentally divergent, in that I am escaping certain unnamed realities that plague my life here. When I stop going there, I will be well. Are you also divergent, friend?
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That was a tremendous scene but the character of L.J. Washington is just a throw away. It would have been a much better movie if it had followed L.J. Washington's divergences instead of Pitt's and Willis' amateur attempts at acting. BTW, L.J., love those bunny slippers.
Madeleine Stowe, who was also great in Playing by Heart, put in a strong performance as head shrinker Kathryn Railly, but she was unable to prevent the catastrophe from unfolding, i.e., the premiere of Twelve Monkeys.
Fight Club (1999) Brad Pitt was Tyler Durden
Playing By Heart (1998) Madeleine Stowe was Gracie
The Fifth Element (1997) Bruce Willis was Korben Dallas
... aka Le cinquième élément (France)
Pulp Fiction (1994) Bruce Willis was Butch Coolidge
Kalifornia (1993) Brad Pitt was Early Grayce
Hudson Hawk (1991) Bruce Willis was Hudson Hawk
The Fisher King (1991) Directed by Terry Gilliam
The Two Jakes (Special Collector's Edition) (1990) Madeleine Stowe was Lillian Bodine
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (20th Anniversary Edition) (1988) Directed by Terry Gilliam
Brazil (1985) Directed by Terry Gilliam
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Jeffrey Goines: There's no right, there's no wrong, there's only popular opinion.
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Terry Gilliam's best sci-fi drama boost great Willis and Pitt performances
2009-09-06 - Writer/director Terry Gilliam's output has been uneven,sometimes he has a winner like "Time Bandits" or "The Fisher King" and other times the results can be wildly uneven like "Brazil"- a film I found wildly confusing or "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" which I found incomphrensible despite the efforts of Johnny Depp and Benicio DelToro. But this sci-fier bears none of those faults for I was completely engrossed in what was happening in the story. It also boasts great performances from Bruce Willis and an Oscar nominated one from Brad Pitt as a schizophrenic patient. I don't want to reveal too much of the plot but if you're into time travel movies--this ones for you. I will probably purchase this in HD DVD since it is so ridiculously so low that it makes the price in Blu-ray to be a crime!! By the way, this film is based or inspired by the French film, "La Jetee".
Back And Forth In The Future... 
2009-08-08 - 12 MONKEYS (along w/ BRAZIL) belongs in a hermitically-sealed time capsule so that future generations are assured of the experience of watching it. Bruce Willis (Die Hard, Pulp Fiction, The Fifth Element, Sin City, etc.) IS the time-traveling Cole! He lives the role, making it look easy. Madeleine Stowe is perfect as his suitably skeptical psychiatrist. Brad Pitt (SE7EN, KALIFORNIA) glides through his role as the utterly bonkers, Jeffrey. Terry Gilliam has a way of making ridiculous settings, themes, and surroundings seem absolutely logical in their insanity! The idea of a world-killing virus is bleak and terrifying, yet in Gilliam's hands, it is darkly humorous and exhilerating. His years w/ Python were well spent indeed! MONKEYS belongs on every sci-fi shelf...
