Can Bruce save the world?

March 20, 1996
Issue 

12 Monkeys
Directed by Terry Gilliam
Starring Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe and Brad Pitt
Reviewed by Norm Dixon

You expect, when entering a cinema to watch the latest Hollywood mega-sci-fi-post-apocalypse-time-travel-killer-disease thriller, to leave your sense of disbelief in the cloakroom.

I am prepared to believe that sometime in 1996 some evil types, believed to be a gang of terrorist animal liberationists dubbed the Army of the 12 Monkeys, released a deadly virus that wiped out 5 billion human beings.

I am eager to believe that the remaining 1 billion now eke out an existence underground. I am rather blasé that this odd, authoritarian, subterranean society can develop the technology to shoot people back in time to track down the nasties.

But I have to draw the line at believing that the ludicrous Bruce Willis can save the world! Sure, an office block or two, a Boeing perhaps, or even an airport, but the human race?

That said, I really enjoyed 12 Monkeys. It is a gripping thriller which cleverly uses the complex time travel device without overdoing it. It carries a deft environmental warning about the dangers of corporate control of genetic engineering and viral research for profits. An underlying theme of the film is: don't blithely dismiss warnings about coming environmental catastrophes.

Ludicrous Bruce, an unsavoury character in the dank, dark world of the future, "volunteers" to be inserted into the past to track down the mysterious Army of the 12 Monkeys, discover the nature of the virus and return to the future so that basement-dwelling boffins can find a cure. While in the past, he discovers fresh air, psychiatry and true love and decides there's no time like the present. Bruce must save the world.

Brad Pitt has enormous fun playing the dribbling, bung-eyed nutter who gathers the Army of the 12 Monkeys to take revenge on his filthy rich dad, who makes his fortune torturing laboratory animals. Madeleine Stowe is the psychiatrist who finally believes Bruce's ranting. She, improbably, decides his shaved head and three-day stubble is a turn-on. Together they unravel the mystery.

The film is reminiscent of director Terry Gilliam's earlier cult film Brazil, although much less surreal and much more "Hollywood". The camera angles and lighting reinforce the atmosphere of swirling intersections of past, present and future, of sanity and madness, of belief and disbelief, of hopelessness and hope.

The glaring flaw is the insulting portrayal of environmentalists — conveniently presented as easily marginalised radical animal liberationists — as well-meaning kooks.

The reality is that the world will not be saved by the likes of the ludicrous Bruce Willis and other gun-toting cartoon characters but by those many "non-stars" organised in the environmental and radical movements that 12 Monkeys so lightly dismisses.

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