Product Description

An exciting, intelligent science-fiction adventure from Terry Gilliam starring Bruce Willis as a convict from the year 2035 sent back to 1996, where he attempts to find the cause of a deadly virus that has ravaged his future world. With help from psychiatrist Madeleine Stowe, Willis tracks the germ's invention to mental patient Brad Pitt, the son of a prominent scientist. 130 min. Widescreen (Enhanced); Soundtracks: English Dolby Digital 5.1, French Dolby Digital 5.1; Subtitles: French, Spanish; audio commentary; theatrical trailer.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3500 in DVD
• Brand: WILLIS,BRUCE
• Released on: 2005-05-10
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
• Dubbed in: French
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 129 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

DVD features
The main difference between the 2005 Special Edition and the old Collector's Edition is that the Special Edition has been digitally remastered. If you're finicky about packaging, you'll notice the special edition comes in a gold amaray case. The bonus features on both editions are exactly the same. --Ryan Boudinot

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