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12 Monkeys
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 20 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 22 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Sci-fi | Suspense/Thriller
Written by:
Chris Marker (film La Jetee)
David Webb Peoples
Janet Peoples
Directed by: Terry Gilliam
Release Date:
Theatrical: January 5, 1996
DVD: September 2, 2003
Running Time: 129 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for violence and language
Starring Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, Brad Pitt, Christopher Plummer, Jon Seda, Joseph Melito, David Morse, and Michael Chance
Between sanity and madness, fantasy and reality, the past and the future, comes an adventure beyond imagination from Terry Gilliam, the acclaimed director of "The Fisher King." Penal colony prisoner James Cole (Willis) must travel back in time from the year 2035 to find the cause of a virus that killed five billion people in 1997. (Universal)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Brazil Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Jabberwocky Monty Python and the Holy Grail Monty Python's Life of Brian The Brothers Grimm The Fisher King Tideland
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
Gilliam keeps the audience guessing, and in doing so creates a startlingly effective rumination on the nature of sanity and madness cloaked in the shroud of a sci-fi thriller.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
Bruce Willis is bruisingly good as the hero and Brad Pitt is suitably zany as the activist who dogs his trail.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Gilliam, along with the gifted cinematographer Roger Pratt and production designer Jeffrey Beecroft, fashions a disturbing and dazzling lost world.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Elvis Mitchell
Fierce and disturbing, with a plot that skillfully resists following any familiar course. The film's hero fears that he's half-crazy, and for two hours Mr. Gilliam artfully keeps his audience feeling the same way.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
It's refreshing to encounter a movie with a logical, intelligent approach to the dangers of zipping through time.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
For all his daring, the brazen creator maintains control - there's aesthetic order in the disorder, and calculated reason in the madness. Seldom has it felt so good to seem so lost.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Examiner Barbara Shulgasser
One of the qualities that makes "12 Monkeys" so good is the fact that it is almost too complicated to explain.
Read Full Review >USA Today Mike Clark
A Hitchcockian chase...A crowd-pleasing airport-pursuit pic. [27 Dec 1995, p.D1]
Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
As the jabbering psychotic Jeffrey Goines, Brad Pitt has a rabid, get-a-load-of-me deviousness that works for the film's central mystery: We can't tell where the fanatic leaves off and the put-on artist begins.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Staff (Not Credited)
That Terry Gilliam managed to make Twelve Monkeys into a clever, complex, and poignant success is as astonishing as it is satisfying.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Scott Rosenberg
To Gilliam's quiver of attributes this new movie adds a quality that's on the endangered list in today's Hollywood: coherence.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Peter Stack
A grandiose cinematic invention, cleverly turning the present-day urban American world on its ear.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Any laughs that it inspires will be very hollow. It's more of a celebration of madness and doom, with a hero who tries to prevail against the chaos of his condition, and is inadequate.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Mystifying, intriguing, even infuriating, it shows what happens when an unconventional talent meets straightforward material.
Washington Post Rita Kempley
A densely plotted, visually dynamic post-apocalyptic thriller.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
In a movie in which time travel is used to rectify the past, it's too bad scriptwriters David and Janet Peoples didn't go through the time/space tunnel to work on that first draft again.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
Brad Pitt has fun with his secondary part as a pontificating lunatic, but I wish I'd enjoyed the rest of the cast more.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker Terrence Rafferty
But finally the film is no more than a flamboyant curiosity, replacing the spooky obsessiveness of "La Jetée" with a much tamer kind of weirdness. Also with Brad Pitt, in a showy role as a voluble lunatic; he's dreadful.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Corliss
Intent on both dazzling and punishing the viewer, Gilliam gets lost in creepy spectacle and plenty of old film clips (notably "Vertigo"). But at the sight of three giraffes crossing a city bridge, you'll think of a more recent movie. A bad one. [8 Jan 1996, p.69]
What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 8.4 (out of 10) based on 22 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Apocalypse Brown gave it a9:
I'm rating this movie a nine because at the time of release, it was definitely one of the cleverest movies made. Yes it was a little too long and over-pedantic, but all the actors put a good shift in. Great movie, Empire magazine also agrees with me.
tim r. gave it a10:
Thought provoking.
Neil J. gave it a10:
When 12 Monkeys was released, it was hyped as: 'Bruce Willis is in a madhouse! Is he really crazy?' Buzz was mostly negative, but with a few enthusiastic endorsements. Since that is usually the sign of crap-- the rare endorsement almost always a shilly affair-- I stayed away. Well, I just watched this movie because it was a monthly freebie on digital cable. I'm here to say that 12 Monkeys is a fine movie, and I really enjoyed it. Most 'good' thrillers and time-travel films have clues that you need to look for on the second viewing if you want to know what happened, if you really want to find out why the film was 'good'. Or, the 'good' film shows you directly, in a big reveal, so that no explanations are necessary for anyone with an IQ over 80. 12 Monkeys, however, if you are intelligent, puts everything right in front of the (observant) viewer's face and doesn't play any tricks; there's no filmmaker dishonesty or bait and switch involved, which is incredibly refreshing. Willis and Stowe are quite good together; their growing intimacy is convincing, and their relationship becomes the non-cheesy center of a sci-fi time-travel film. (Not to sound too creepy, but the many close-ups of Stowe's lovely face were not at all unpleasant; her transformation from concerned psychiatric professional to a modern Cassandra with her hair down is a real pleasure to watch.) The film's major, glaring flaw is Brad Pitt, who is so over-the-top and verbose in his role as a certifiable ingrate gazillionaire scientist's son, that one wonders how much better a film it would have been without him. His manic and too-clever by-half exposition doesn't seem to disturb Willis, yet Willis (apparently like Gilliam) could not reign him in. Art direction of 'the future' is where 12 Monkeys seems most like a Gilliam film-- the environment of the survivors on a post-apocalyptic Earth looks something like something from Time Bandits, with modern technology apparently cobbled out of chain-link fencing, old TVs, 50s-era medical instruments and the guts of grandfather clocks. Willis' performance is weakest after his transformation (which I won't spoil); he is simply too contrite; a lighter touch would have been much more powerful. Anyway, this review is getting long. If you've always thought of 12 Monkeys as a cheap sci-fi thriller starring Bruce Willis that nobody really remembers or cares much about, I suggest that you watch it. I promise that you will be pleasantly surprised.
Roy T. gave it a5:
An impressing achievement of filmmaking for Mr Gilliam, as well as very cool acting by Brad Pitt. there are some people who will find this clever "complex" and just totally a good film all around. i am definately not one of them. i found it confusing, sadly boring - and yes - a bit too long. i ended up feeling dizzy with a headache at the end. Despite this, there are some aspects of the film i felt intrigued by, such as in the beginning with Bruce walking around in the suit, or Pitt dressed in the tux in the fancy mansion watching Bruces character run off - it was cool to with the scientist scenes talking to bruce. as the film progresses, i felt it lacked entertainment for my taste. i am completely mixed opinioned on this movie. The Mental Hospital scenes were cool, but Mr Pitts last few scenes dragged in ultra dialogy nonsense that just gave me a headache. Sorry Mr Gilliam, your a good director, but 12 monkeys isn't my cup of tea.
chad s. gave it an8:
The best time travel movie i have ever seen. very interesting, well acted, and an overall entertaining and good movie. Pick it up.
Max P. gave it a2:
This film was both too confusing and broing and as for the ending, its a joke, pathetic. if you are going to find out who the killer is then make it a big character not some ginger haired idiot.....A failure for Gilliam, on a kinder note the only reason i give this a 2 is for Brad Pitts unbelievable acting, his best peice to date, too bad the movie was rubbish!
Tom K. gave it a4:
Maybe if I saw this movie 10 years ago, I would appreciate it more, but the time travel philosophy in this movie was absolutely pointless. Everything was very predictable, nothing intriguing and wow factor that hits you. And when it does in the last 10 min, you realize the absurdity of the movie. It's just another time travel paradox, an endless cycle of trying to change the future, yet whatever you do, that exact future is coming. The movie touches upon parallel universes at least unlike Back To The Future, but the looping cycle is flawed. I really like time travel movies, and so I thought this movie had a complex, fresh, imaginative, thought on time travel, but yet it's nothing you haven't thought about. I did like the psychological part of time travelling however, and the acting was well, mostly by Brad.
