12 Monkeys

Bruce Willis is one of my favourite actors.  My four favourite Bruce Willis Movies are Die Hard 2, The Fifth Element, Death Becomes Her which has already been mentioned and the movie this post is dedicated to, 12 Monkeys.

12 Monkeys is one of my favourite movies for a number of reasons, firstly it deals with time travel, as it alternates between timelines, secondly as it deals with questions about fate and whether or not the future is already decided, and finally I like it for its somewhat ambiguous nature, particularly the ending scenes.

The tragedy I find in this movie is that of a recurring dream Bruce Willis character James Cole experiences.  All through the Movie he has a recurring dream of a memory of when he was a child where he witnessed the death of a man in an airport.  The story of the movie plays out and in the end ultimately the same scene from the dream is played out again only we find out that the man who dies in front of the young James Cole is the much older James Cole that travelled back in time.  This moment is quite representative of the mortality of man, where James unknowingly witnesses his own death which will stay with him all his life and only in the end in his dying breaths will he know the truth.

I have not spoiled anything in my synopsis as the dream sequence is repeated several times through the course of the movie and it becomes quite apparent early on if you can put 2 and 2 together as to what is going to happen, nevertheless the scene is still quite tragic - to paraphrase "car crash television" this has the same effect, you know what is coming, you know you might not want to watch but you are still hooked and curious as to whether everything will happen as you know it will.

I link below the trailer to 12 Monkeys and hope you enjoy!

Oh yes, footnote, Brad Pitt is in this movie and once again demonstrates his impressive ability to play crazy, really well.