12 Monkeys 4K HDR

Although Chris Marker's 1962 short film La Jetee is part of the basic text in film schools across the country, the time travel photo play was generally unknown to mass audiences.  Which made its clever conceit of a man witnessing his own death as a child the perfect starting place for Twelve Monkeys (1995), a much more elaborate (and needlessly complicated) extrapolation of Marker's themes of love, loss and memory.

A post-apocalyptic "volunteer" sent back to the '90s to gather information on the disease that will destroy humanity, James Cole (Bruce Willis) is promptly locked up in a mental institution where he befriends fellow inmate Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt).  A genuine psychotic with nihilistic tendencies, Goines is in turn inspired by James' alternate reality, plotting to use his father's medical research facility to return the world to its true owners: the animals.  James eventually convinces his psychiatrist Madeleine Stowe) to help put a stop to the self-anointed Army of the Twelve Monkeys, and prevent the future he might have inadvertently created.

 

Director Terry Gilliam, desperate to prove his dependability to Hollywood, tweaked the story to incorporate his own eccentricities, essentially a continuation of the hand-me-down futuristic aesthetic that worked so brilliantly in Brazil.  But with a pair of box office stars - Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt - eager to elevate their status as actors rather than icons, Gilliam's job here is really just to get out of the way.  The script pays some lip service to the doomed romance illustrated in Marker's film (including an overly dramatic DePalma-like slow-motion finale), but focuses more on the Terminator-style mind games as Cole's mission impacts humanity and his own personal history.

 

Universal's marketing played up the Terminator angle as well (just check out the original artwork), perhaps nervous about the film's more intellectual ambitions.  Maybe that's why, despite the talent involved, Twelve Monkeys feels like a project by committee.  There's some good material for Gilliam to work with here, but his input seems neutered from the get go.  Willis puts in a good effort and Madeleine Stowe performs well in the rather thankless role as supportive love interest.  Pitt, however, seems so desperate to prove he's got real acting chops that he might want a chance to slip back in time for a do-over himself.

 

Arrow's new 4K Ultra HD edition starts with a brand-new 4K restoration from the original film then adds a Gilliam commentary, interviews, video appreciation, artwork archive, liner notes and a massive 90-minute plus making-of - The Hamster Factor - that brilliantly documents the production process.  

 

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