Product Description

Cole (Bruce Willis) is sent back in time to save the human race from a deadly virus that has forced mankind into dank underground communities in the future. Along his travels, he encounters a psychiatrist (Madeleine Stowe) and a mental patient, brilliantly portrayed by Brad Pitt, who may hold the key to the mysterious rogue group, the Army of the 12 Monkeys, thought to be responsible for unleashing the killer disease. Believing he can obtain a pure virus sample in order to find a cure in the future, he is met with one riddle after another that puts him in a race with time. This sci-fi masterpiece from the genius mind of Terry Gilliam is a modern-day classic.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9065 in DVD
• Brand: Uni
• Released on: 2009-07-28
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Dubbed in: Spanish
• Dimensions: 1.20 pounds
• Running time: 130 minutes

Amazon.com
Inspired by Chris Marker's acclaimed short film La Jetée (which is included on the DVD Short 2: Dreams), 12 Monkeys combines intricate, intelligent storytelling with the uniquely imaginative vision of director Terry Gilliam. The story opens in the wintry wasteland of the year 2035, where a virulent plague has forced humans to live in a squalid, oppressively regimented underground. Bruce Willis plays a societal outcast who is given the opportunity to erase his criminal record by "volunteering" to time-travel into the past to obtain a pure sample of the deadly virus that will help future scientists to develop a cure. But in bouncing from 1918 to the early and mid-1990s, he undergoes an ordeal that forces him to question his own perceptions of reality. Caught between the dangers of the past and the devastation of the future, he encounters a psychiatrist (Madeleine Stowe) who is initially convinced he's insane, and a wacky mental patient (Brad Pitt in a twitchy Oscar-nominated role) with links to a radical group that may have unleashed the deadly virus. Equal parts mystery, tragedy, psychological thriller, and apocalyptic drama, 12 Monkeys ranks as one of the best science fiction films of the '90s, boosted by Gilliam's visual ingenuity and one of the finest performances of Willis's career. --Jeff Shannon

From The New Yorker
Terry Gilliam's elaborate time-travel thriller is based on Chris Marker's elegant twenty-nine-minute short, "La Jetée" (1964). Turning that perfect, rigorously constructed fable about memory and mortality into a big-budget futuristic action picture starring Bruce Willis is an inherently quixotic project, but the screenwriters, David and Janet Peoples, do a surprisingly skillful job: the complicated plot they've worked out has its own logic and integrity, and it even preserves, like insects fossilized in amber, a few poignant traces of Marker's metaphysical lyricism. Unfortunately, Gilliam's hyperkinetic direction keeps subverting the story's meaning. Instead of respecting the reflective nature of the material, he bombards us with bizarre sensation; in this picture, memory has the false immediacy of an acid flashback. Willis and his co-star, Madeleine Stowe, give alert, thoughtful performances. 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. -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker