Twelve Monkeys review
By Joel Humphries · Watched 09.15.26
★★★★½ 4.5 / 5
Spoiler-free review
Terry Gilliam’s vision still crackles: a grimy, jury‑rigged future of pipes and broken machinery where even the time machine seems to complain. What starts as a virus-harrowed sci‑fi setup becomes a jittery dance of misfires and mistaken years, with Bruce Willis reminding you how vulnerable and human he can be and Brad Pitt detonating through scenes with manic charisma. Madeleine Stowe grounds the spiral with steady intelligence. The less you know, the better. This is top-shelf science fiction—strange, tense, beautifully designed—and a big-screen revisit only deepened my admiration. Also, seek out the terrific TV series.
Full review — contains spoilers
Getting to see 12 Monkeys on a big screen again was a reminder of just how much I love this movie. It’s one of my favorite science-fiction films, and after all these years the strange, grimy, completely unpredictable world Terry Gilliam created still works for me.
Bruce Willis plays James Cole, a prisoner living in a future where a virus has basically destroyed civilization and forced the survivors underground. Scientists are experimenting with time travel and sending prisoners into the past to figure out where the virus came from.
They’re not really sending Cole back to stop the apocalypse. They’re trying to find the original virus so the scientists in the future can study it and hopefully develop a cure. The problem is that these scientists are not particularly good at sending people to the right time.
So Cole keeps getting dropped into the wrong years. At one point he gets sent back too early, starts telling everybody that most of humanity is about to die, and naturally everybody thinks he’s crazy. He ends up in this old-school psychiatric hospital that feels a little like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
That’s where Brad Pitt shows up as Jeffrey Goines. And Brad Pitt is fantastic in this movie. He’s completely unhinged and has this manic energy that takes over every scene he’s in. He was nominated for an Oscar for it. Madeleine Stowe is also very good as the psychiatrist who initially thinks Cole is delusional and gradually begins wondering whether he might actually be telling the truth.
Bruce Willis is great too. This is a reminder that he could really act. Cole isn’t an action-hero character. He’s confused and scared and increasingly unsure himself about what’s real.
I don’t want to say much more about the plot because you shouldn’t know too much before watching 12 Monkeys. The surprises are part of what makes it work.
Terry Gilliam directed it, and it absolutely looks like a Terry Gilliam movie. The future is dirty and weird and full of pipes and machinery. Nothing is sleek. Nothing works quite right. Even the time machine barely works.
I think this movie is fantastic. It’s one of my favorite science-fiction movies.
I also love the 12 Monkeys television series, which I don’t think enough people watched. Aaron Stanford plays Cole in that version, and Amanda Schull plays Cassandra Railly. It ran for four seasons, and honestly I may love the show even more than the movie.
If you’ve never seen the original movie, absolutely watch it. And if you ever get an opportunity to see it in a theater, take it. Getting to see it on a big screen again was a treat.