12 Monkeys (1995)

12 MONKEYS  (1995)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Terry Gilliam 
    Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, Brad Pitt,
    Christopher Plummer, Frank Gorshin, David Morse
A mind-bending science-fiction movie exploring the psychological territory between insanity and time travel. Bruce Willis plays James Cole, a convict who starts out in the future (his present) with a shot at a pardon if he "volunteers" to go back to 1996 to help prevent an epidemic that will otherwise wipe out all human life. Only Cole gets dispatched back to 1990 instead, where he's arrested for violent behavior, and when he starts telling people he's from the future, and how there's going to be an epidemic connected to a conspiracy involving (you guessed it) 12 monkeys, he's locked up in a mental institution. There he falls in with a fellow patient played by Brad Pitt (acting crazy and having a real good time), who, it turns out, has something to do with the 12 monkeys. It's a mystery that keeps you wondering, even after Cole comes under the care of a shrink (Madeleine Stowe), who's sympathetic, but doesn't believe his time-travel story, at least not right away, and by the end, when it all kind of comes together, you're in "Vertigo" territory. It's one of Terry Gilliam's best movies, an example of what he can do when his visual extravagance serves the story, and not the other way around. David Webb Peoples, who wrote Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven", cowrote the script.