9/10
Ridiculous that I haven't seen this movie until now! I don't know what I was waiting for, it was on the "someday" list forever. I'd seen the movie that inspired it ages ago, Chris Marker's La Jetee, and thought it was really cool but I wasn't confident that using it as a jumping off point for a feature would work so well. I was wrong, it worked brilliantly, and 12 Monkeys is brilliantly scripted which certainly helps. The movie has a really similar feel to Brazil in both its paranoid plot and the way the films are shot, Gilliam certainly has an unmistakable style. I never really cared too much for Bruce Willis in anything but he was really great in this. Brad Pitt is more than a little over the top and his performance is off-putting at times (specifically when we first meet him) but is okay overall. I was going to ask what ever happened to Madeleine Stowe but it looks like she recently returned to acting on TV's Revenge, which I haven't seen. Overall a really great movie, even knowing the main "twist" of La Jetee doesn't spoil the fun of watching 12 Monkeys to the end because it's so expertly crafted, every scene leaves you wondering how they're going to get to what comes next and how they made a movie that teeters on the brink of insanity yet manages to make perfect sense.
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