Actors - Twelve Monkeys

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	Actors - Twelve Monkeys

Twelve Monkeys is a 1995 film co-written by David Webb Peoples and directed by Terry Gilliam. The movie deals with time travel and memory and is inspired by the short La Jetée
.

The film stars Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, and Brad Pitt. It also features Jon Seda, Simon Jones, Carol Florence, Frank Gorshin, David Morse, and Joseph Melito.

Synopsis

Bruce Willis stars as James Cole, a criminal in the 2020s plagued by dreams of a man being shot in an airport. Humans are forced to live underground, sealed from a surface contaminated with a virus that killed most of the human species in 1996-1997. The disease is believed to have arisen as an act of bioterrorism by a mysterious group calling itself "The Army of the Twelve Monkeys."

As a convict, Cole is forced to "volunteer" for dangerous missions to the surface in a biohazard suit, exploring a deserted Philadelphia for biological specimens. The abandoned city is now inhabited by wild animals. Cole proves to be a careful observer with excellent memory and is "volunteered" to participate in a more ambitious branch of the program.

The movie has an unusual narrative style. The viewer will be confused at the first viewing and able to piece together the story only towards the end of the movie. Stowe plays a psychiatrist and Pitt, in an Oscar-nominated performance, plays a man who crosses paths with Cole on several occasions.

The scientists of the future have invented a crude method of time travel. Travelers cannot be sure of the exact time and place to which they are sent, and they are badly disoriented after arriving at the past and upon return, facilitated by such means of a phone call to an answering machine monitored by future scientists. Cole and others are sent back in time to find the origin of the disease before a scientist can be sent back to study the virus before it ever mutated.

The scientists try to send Cole back to October 1996 on his first trip, a few weeks before the outbreak of the disease. He lands in April 1990 instead. He is arrested after a violent encounter that convinces the authorities that he is insane -- not least because he claims to be a time traveller from an apocalyptic future. He is institutionalized and placed under the care of Dr. Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe).

While there, Cole meets Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt), a seriously deranged animal rights and anti-consumerist activist. The extended encounter between Cole and Goines weaves Goines's beliefs into the fabric of the film's treatment of disease and time travel.

Goines helps Cole escape the ward by creating a major disturbance, but he is quickly recaptured and placed in metal restraints in an isolation cell with seemingly no possibility of an escape. Cole returns to the future nevertheless, baffling the authorities.

In a second attempt to send Cole back to 1996, he arrives briefly in the middle of a battle during World War I. While he's still trying to orient himself he encounters Jose, another inmate, who has been sent back to retrieve him from this mistaken arrival and has been wounded in the head during the attempt. Jose and Cole are photographed after Cole is shot in the leg, and later it is revealed that Jose has earned a small footnote in history when French doctors decide that he has forgotten French and retained English with an unrecognized dialect as a result of shell shock.

Cole manages to arrive at the target date, about six weeks before the disease broke out during the Christmas season, in the course of this second attempt. Between 1990 and 1996, Dr. Railly has taken an interest in prophets of doom who claim to be time-travelers warning of a disease that would destroy the world. She publishes a book on the topic, citing examples dating back to the 14th century. Cole finds a poster announcing one of her talks, and kidnaps her after a book-signing session to aid his mission. She believes he is delusional, but begins to help him after he passes on opportunities to harm her.

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