Film Club Review – 12 Monkeys
Tuesday 3 December 2013
On Thursday 26 November Queenswood’s Film Club finally gotoff the ground, following weeks of deliberation over everything from potential
themes to flavours of popcorn. The chosen theme for this half term being ‘Time
Travel,’ our first film was Terry Gilliam’s Oscar-nominated 12 Monkeys, a sci-fi thriller starring
Bruce Willis, Brad Pitt and Madeleine Stowe.
The plot, in something of the same vein as The Terminator, is relatively simple; it
follows convict James Cole (Willis) in his journey from the future to decipher
the cause of a deadly virus destined to wipe out almost the entire human race
in the spring of 1996 and leaving the survivors, Cole among them, forced to
live underground until the origin of the virus is uncovered and it is safe for
them to return to the surface. Complications arise when the unreliable time
machine designed to transport James fails (on more than one occasion) to send
him to the intended time, leaving him struggling to reconcile the two realities
of ‘past’ and ‘present’, and eventually, to question his own sanity.
A film at once gripping, moving and provocative, it has set
a high standard for the rest of the term. On Wednesday 4 December we will be
watching our next film on the same theme, the BAFTA award-winning Groundhog Day.