12 Monkeys

For this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched “12 Monkeys,” the 1995 science fiction film from Terry Gilliam starring Bruce Willis, Madeline Stowe, Brad Pitt and Christopher Plummer. “12 Monkeys” is an adaptation of sorts of a 1962 French short film “La Jetée,” in which scientists in a post-nuclear apocalypse future send a man back and forward through time in an effort to save their present. The man eventually succeeds in his mission, only to be killed — his death being an image he had seen again and again in his dreams. And in the film “12 Monkeys,” Bruce Willis plays James Cole, a prisoner living in an underground compound beneath Philadelphia, in a future where the human race has been nearly wiped out by viral plague. He is selected to go back in time to find the original virus to help scientists in his present develop a cure. During multiple trips back in time, he encounters people — a patient at a mental health institution played by Pitt, a psychologist played by Stowe — who all seem to have a role in the events that will end the human race. Cole struggles to resolve whether his life and experiences are real or not, but comes to understand that the virus is real, and that the man responsible is in his orbit. He attempts to stop him but is shot and killed, fulfilling the vision he had seen, in his dreams, of his own death.