Similarly to how the film’s lead character returns to the same events over and over, the 1995 sci-fi thriller 12 Monkeys represents filmmaker Terry Gilliam circling back on his own career in a few notable ways. Firstly, and most obviously, it’s another time travel story, familiar in theme to (if very different in tone from) his 1981 comedy Time Bandits – previously the director’s most popular and profitable project. Behind the scenes, 12 Monkeys also saw Gilliam return to work for Universal Studios, the company that nearly destroyed his 1985 masterpiece Brazil.
The bitter and very public feud over production of Brazil is the stuff of industry legend, and almost marked Gilliam as unemployable in Hollywood circles. In contrast, 12 Monkeys was made with the deliberate intention of proving Gilliam could play nicely with a major studio if he tried hard enough, even the same studio he’d gone to war against not long earlier.
In many respects, this is the most mainstream-friendly and conventional movie from the notoriously mercurial filmmaker. Not coincidentally, it’s also his most financially successful effort, by some considerable margin. Even viewers who normally have little patience for the director’s other work tend to rate 12 Monkeys highly.
| Title: | 12 Monkeys |
| Year of Release: | 1995 |
| Director: | Terry Gilliam |
| Watched On: | 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray |
| Also Available On: | Blu-ray Various VOD rental and purchase platforms |
Perhaps an unavoidable requirement to get back into Universal’s good graces, 12 Monkeys is one his few films Gilliam didn’t write or develop himself. Instead, the movie originated from a screenplay by David Webb Peoples (Blade Runner) and his wife Janet Peoples, which was in turn allegedly “inspired by” the 1962 experimental short film La Jetée by Chris Marker. Gilliam himself claims he hadn’t seen La Jetée when he made 12 Monkeys. Even if he had, any connections between the two are incredibly loose.
Proven box office star Bruce Willis leads the cast as James Cole, a convict from a hellish prison in the year 2035. In his dystopian future, most of humanity was wiped out by a viral plague, forcing survivors to live underground while wild animal life has retaken the world above. Due to his noted skills as a keen observer, Cole is forcibly volunteered to participate in a scientific program involving time travel, in which he will be sent back to the year 1995 to gather information on the source of the virus so that researchers in his timeline can create a cure and return to the surface.
Unfortunately, time travel is a messy process and Cole overshoots his destination, landing in the year 1990 instead, where he’s quickly arrested and institutionalized for perceived mental health issues. Babbling on at length about coming from the future tends to make people think you may not be fully right in the head. The thing is, the longer he stays in the loony bin, the more Cole begins to believe he may actually be crazy after all, his memories of the future all delusions in his fractured mind. Repeated trips back and forth through time don’t help much to clear things up for him.
Famous of course for his sarcastic, smart-mouthed heroics in action movies such as that year’s earlier blockbuster Die Hard with a Vengeance, Bruce Willis dials his performance here way down, playing Cole as a broken man whose response to the insanity around him is to retreat inwards, to a state of near catatonia. Bouncing off his disturbing calmness is Brad Pitt’s manic energy as a fellow nut-house inmate named Jeffrey Goines, who may or may not be destined to eventually unleash the deadly pandemic. Still coming out of the pretty-boy phase of his early career, his work in 12 Monkeys made a lot of viewers and critics take notice that this Pitt kid might have some real acting chops to show off after all.
Less impressive, unfortunately, is Madeleine Stowe’s turn as Cole’s well-meaning but ultimately helpless psychiatrist. Her character doesn’t have much to do in the story, and her pretentious affectation of using the British pronunciation of “advertisement” is a bizarre choice both for the character (in no other way indicated to be British) and for an actress raised in Los Angeles. Legendary star Christopher Plummer also has a supporting role as Goines’ scientist father, and chooses to play it with a cartoonishly broad Foghorn Leghorn-style Southern accent that makes even less sense.
Those nit-picks aside, 12 Monkeys is otherwise a riveting science fiction thriller with fascinating, tightly-structured plotting that begs for and rewards multiple viewings. Despite being a for-hire directorial job, Terry Gilliam in no way treats this as a sell-out project. The filmmaker brings the full force of his skewed sensibilities and unique vision to the material, such that all the scenes set in the future dystopia play as a sort of spiritual sequel to the satirical antics of Brazil. His elaborate, cluttered production design and off-kilter visuals are immediately identifiable and could never be mistaken as the work of anyone else.
Even as his most commercial undertaking, made for the explicit purpose of giving the director a rare box office hit, 12 Monkeys also manages to be one of Terry Gilliam’s strongest and most rewatchable films. In my view, it’s also his last great film before Gilliam settled into a period of artistic decline from which he has yet to recover.
The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
Back in the late 1990s, I bought 12 Monkeys in a rather expensive Universal Signature Collection Laserdisc box set that, presented in letterboxed widescreen with Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound and stocked with bonus features, felt like the pinnacle of everything home video could achieve. We’ve come a bit of a ways since then.
Universal Studios brought 12 Monkeys to high-definition home media in 2006 on the short-lived HD DVD format, followed in 2009 by a comparable Blu-ray release. Arrow Video later licensed the rights to the film in 2018 for a remastered Special Edition Blu-ray, and eventually a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray in 2022.
The 4K release has reversible cover art on its keepcase sleeve. I’m not sure that I find either option particularly exciting.
I recently purchased a copy of the 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray during an Arrow Video sale despite the fact that I already owned Arrow’s previous Blu-ray edition. I hesitated and deliberated about this quite a bit, wondering if the Blu-ray was already good enough and 4K would be overkill for this particular movie.
Having now watched the disc, I feel that the 4K release is a solid upgrade. Although the 1.85:1 image is often soft and very grainy, the 4K version is notably crisper than the Blu-ray, with sometimes surprisingly vibrant colors and contrast. HDR grading also brings better control of highlights that clip in regular HD.
That said, 12 Monkeys is a heavily-stylized movie with a mostly grungy and drab color palette, and a considerable amount of diffusion filtering in its photography. It will never have a razor sharp or eye-popping picture. The grain also frequently comes across as excessively noisy (which was an issue on Arrow’s Blu-ray as well).
Arrow offers the movie’s soundtrack in a choice of DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 or 2.0 formats. As released in 1995, 12 Monkeys played in DTS 5.1 surround in theaters equipped for it. Like many movies from that era, this one has an extremely aggressive and super-fun sound mix with discrete effects bouncing from speaker to speaker, circling the room. It upmixes very well to 7.1 and higher speaker counts. The track also has a lot of satisfying bass, piercing gunshots, and other in-your-face effects that most modern movies are too timid to play with anymore.
The audio commentary by Terry Gilliam and the 87-minute documentary called The Hamster Factor are both excellent but both originated with that old 1997 Laserdisc. A still gallery and trailers have also been around the block a few times, since at least DVD. Arrow has dug up a 1996 film festival Q&A with Gilliam (24 min.) that I don’t recall seeing before. Newer (as of the 2018 Blu-ray) is a 16-minute appreciation by critic Ian Christie, author of the book Gilliam on Gilliam.
The Arrow Special Edition Blu-ray additionally came packaged with a booklet containing an essay by critic Nathan Raban and a text interview with Gilliam. My copy of the 4K edition did not include that booklet.
[Update: Per discussion in the comments below, I’ve discovered that Arrow’s Blu-ray edition and early copies of the 4K UHD have an error at approximately 41 minutes into the movie where some footage is repeated on screen while the soundtrack plays the original audio uninterrupted. Later pressings of the UHD, including the copy I watched for this review, fixed that problem and play the correct footage during the scene.]
Related
- Terry Gilliam
- Time Travel Theme (other)
- Bruce Willis
- Brad Pitt
- David Webb Peoples (writer)
Note: All screenshots on this page were taken from the standard Blu-ray edition of the film and are used for illustration purposes only.
The Video File Blog 
I believe the Arrow remastered Blu-ray has an editing error which no one spotted for like four years. The UHD had it as well but then a corrected version was issued. It’s easy to miss because so much is going on in the scene. I think there is a frame that gets repeated. Anyway, more than likely you have the corrected UHD.
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I’ve checked both discs. The Blu-ray has the repeated footage error at approx. 41 minutes, but my copy of the 4K disc (the one I watched for this review) is accurate and must be the corrected version.
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I was going to say the same thing. I got the original pressing of the 4K disc, and there’s about a minute of footage repeated around the 40-minute mark in the movie. The audio stays consistent, but the footage gets looped.
I finally got the corrected disc, but it was a bit of a hassle with Arrow’s customer service.
I’m glad you didn’t have any problems playing the disc as I know quite a few new discs have given you problems in the past.
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