Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 4-July-02
Spoiler Rating: Medium

12 Monkeys (1996)

People often call Bruce Willis an "action star" because of his initial success with the "Die Hard" series, but I think that's an overly limiting appellation. A better title for Willis would be "confused underdog hero in movies with numerical titles," based on his star turns in "The Fifth Element," "The Sixth Sense," and "12 Monkeys." In these pictures (and a couple of others), he doesn't just save the day and get the girl; he muddles through some very strange vagaries of life searching for truth, self-understanding, and love, and he doesn't unequivocally come out on top. And I like that. Willis excels at playing someone capable of mistakes and anger, even violence, but who nevertheless seems decent enough to merit redemption and compassion. He's the anchor, the recognizable point of entry in movies about weird, frightening worlds where, without him, I might not want to go.

In "12 Monkeys," a highly entertaining piece of paranoia from Terry Gilliam, Willis plays James Cole, a convict whiling away his life --- along with the rest of humanity --- in a bleak underground world circa 2020 after a virus has wiped out most of Earth's human population and rendered the surface uninhabitable. Recruited to go back in time to the 1990s and gather information about the virus, Cole first finds himself incarcerated in a mental hospital in 1990. There, he meets Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt), the intelligent but unhinged son of a prominent medical researcher, and Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe), a kind (and, of course, beautiful) psychiatrist. After a painful stay during which he begins to question his sanity, Cole is snatched away and reassigned to 1996, where he forcibly enlists Dr. Railly's assistance in searching for the elusive Army of the 12 Monkeys, who, his research has suggested, was responsible for letting the virus loose on the world. Just as Railly begins to believe that Cole really is from the future, he is again snatched away to report back to his subterranean handlers, which furthers his belief (or hope, rather) that everything he has been experiencing is a delusion. Finally, he is returned to 1996, where he and Railly try to prevent the release of the virus and forge a new life together, but are unable to escape the destiny that awaits them.

Viewers of "12 Monkeys" are, like Cole, thrown about and roughed up a bit, although the story never gets too out of hand. Gilliam presents both the post-apocalyptic future and the 1990s as grim, dingy, bleak eras --- it takes Cole's rapture at seeing sunlight and breathing clean air to remind you why life before the virus was better. And while the scientists in Cole's underground prison are scary (a cross between your cruel, ruler-wielding schoolmaster and the big, eastern European nurse who does horrible things with her thermometer), the thugs and nutcases and snide cops in 1996 Baltimore aren't any more comforting. Is either world Gilliam portrays really worth saving or crying over? You have to wonder what goes on in this guy's head.

Which brings me back to Willis' childlike, expressive, likable face. It was Cole that I hoped would be saved --- from captivity, uncertainty, responsibility, and pain --- and not the modern world, where we really are a little too smug in our illusory domination of the environment, and animals, and even our own psyches. I don't think "12 Monkeys" was meant to be much more than imaginative entertainment, but, like many other futuristic tales, it left me with the notion that technology and knowledge aren't what make us worthy of love, admiration, or even life; that distinction still rests with the humanness bestowed on us by nature.

Copyright © 2002 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.