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12 Monkeys movie review (1995)

 
 
 

  Not too bad but kind of depressing.  The instances where Bruce Willis is in the mental hospital AKA nuthouse were examples of how they seem to really treat people in there.  Same drugs, same attitudes displayed by the people that say they want to 'help' you.



  About a guy named James Cole (played by Bruce Willis) from the future where 99% of the humans are killed by a biological weapons, and the remaining 1% are living below ground.  He's 'volunteered' to do an exploratory mission on the surface, wearing a clear plastic suit to keep him from exposing himself to whatever might still be up there, germ-wise.  He saw some wild animals like a bear and lion and something with monkeys and the words "we did it" painted on it.  This leads him to believe that the army of the 12 monkeys released the virus that killed off five billion people around the world.  One of the abandoned stores he went into was still playing Christmas music.  After he returned below, he was asked to be part of another mission, to go back to the year 1996, just before the biological weapon is released.  Unfortunately, he arrived in the year 1990, dressed in transparent plastic.  After being asked for his identification (he appeared in one of the more oppressive countries that insisted on everyone having identification or they may be imprisoned) and becoming angry (can you really blame him?), it took five police to take him down.  He managed to send two of his nazi-imitating attackers to the hospital.  They sent him to a mental hospital, where the psychiatrist, Kathryn Railly (played by Madeleine Stowe) claimed she knew him from somewhere, but, couldn't remember where.  After some time, he escaped while left alone in a locked room and fully restrained at 38 minutes into the movie.  At 43 minutes, we saw what looked like a meter with headshots of people on it, possibly a way of determining the destination with the time travel system used.  As you probably already know, some places focus more on wars (some countries can't even go five years between military operations and many of their later combat operations were primarily focused on protecting corporate interests such as oil) and leaders instead of things like medical discoveries and inventions.  If I had my druthers, I'd live in the country that considered the latter more important, and not the former.  The scientists claimed they were sending him back to the third quarter of 1996, "right on the money" but, he was instead sent to World War I.  He met Jose there, another guy from the future, in one of the trenches.  After that, we see Kathryn discussing her book in front of an audience, and talking about Jose, although she didn't know his name.  Another example she used about the worries of the world coming to an end due to a great plague was a guy in the 1400s who said that the world would be ravaged by one in 600 years from then.  At one hour, two minutes, James and Kathryn see him on the street and the preacher recognized James Cole saying "you're one of us."  At one hour, 17 minutes, James Cole disappeared while he was dancing in water near Kathryn.  She didn't actually see it, but, she heard him talking and dancing in the water, and, a couple of seconds after he stopped making noise, she turned her head and he was gone.  Later on, she's asked if she took her sedative, but said she didn't because they mess her up.  Yet, psychiatrists force others to take things that they themselves won't.  Much like the majority of hypocrite oncologists who have their patients go through chemotherapy, but, won't do it themselves.  At one hour, 21 minutes, James Cole starts talking in the future as though he believed what the dead people in the past told him, that he was insane.  At one hour, 25 minutes, Kathryn Railly, after being told that the bullet she removed from James Cole's leg was fired prior to 1920, found a picture of him in that time on her wall, and that's when she realized where she recognized him from.  A little later, after the fight with the pimp, Cole and Railly go to the store that Cole was in after the virus killed off over five billion people, and they were just putting up the angel statue.  At one hour, 45 minutes, we see part of the movie Vertigo (1958) with James AKA Jimmy Stewart in it.  In it, they show part of a very old tree's cross section with the rings marked from historic periods in history such as 1066 (the Battle of Hastings), 1215 (the signing of the Magna Carta), 1492 (the discovery of America), and the date the tree was cut down (1930).  At one hour, 49 minutes, they show the wild animals on the streets and buildings.  At one hour, 54 minutes, the ticket seller says the same cities where they released the virus.  James Cole figured out that the army of the 12 monkeys weren't the ones responsible for the virus, and had only released wild animals in the city.  He left a message on the voice mail about it, which made the scientists send Jose back in time to give him a pistol to take out the guy who released the virus.  As James Cole was trying to shoot him, he was also a child nearby in the airport, watching himself being shot.  This was the nightmare he had for years, the memory of watching his own murder, decades before it happened.



  I really liked it when the 12 Monkeys army let out all the animals on the city (even though if you think about it, it probably wasn't a very safe place for the animals to be released into).  The movie kinda reminded me of the movie Brazil with the sets and everything.  How the movie ended was easy to figure out after a very short time.  I just wish they would've done more with Bruce's random jumps through time, and of course, had a happier ending.
 
 

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