Twelve Monkeys
Universal Pictures | Release Date: January 5, 1996 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
75
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 20 Critic Reviews
Positive:
16
Mixed:
4
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
Gilliam keeps the audience guessing, and in doing so creates a startlingly effective rumination on the nature of sanity and madness cloaked in the shroud of a sci-fi thriller. Read full review
100
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
Bruce Willis is bruisingly good as the hero and Brad Pitt is suitably zany as the activist who dogs his trail. Read full review
100
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Gilliam, along with the gifted cinematographer Roger Pratt and production designer Jeffrey Beecroft, fashions a disturbing and dazzling lost world. Read full review
90
The New York TimesJanet Maslin
Fierce and disturbing, with a plot that skillfully resists following any familiar course. The film's hero fears that he's half-crazy, and for two hours Mr. Gilliam artfully keeps his audience feeling the same way. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
For all his daring, the brazen creator maintains control - there's aesthetic order in the disorder, and calculated reason in the madness. Seldom has it felt so good to seem so lost. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
It's refreshing to encounter a movie with a logical, intelligent approach to the dangers of zipping through time. Read full review
88
San Francisco ExaminerBarbara Shulgasser
One of the qualities that makes "12 Monkeys" so good is the fact that it is almost too complicated to explain. Read full review
88
USA TodayMike Clark
A Hitchcockian chase...A crowd-pleasing airport-pursuit pic. [27 Dec 1995, p.D1]
83
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
As the jabbering psychotic Jeffrey Goines, Brad Pitt has a rabid, get-a-load-of-me deviousness that works for the film's central mystery: We can't tell where the fanatic leaves off and the put-on artist begins. Read full review
80
SalonScott Rosenberg
To Gilliam's quiver of attributes this new movie adds a quality that's on the endangered list in today's Hollywood: coherence. Read full review
80
TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)
That Terry Gilliam managed to make Twelve Monkeys into a clever, complex, and poignant success is as astonishing as it is satisfying. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Any laughs that it inspires will be very hollow. It's more of a celebration of madness and doom, with a hero who tries to prevail against the chaos of his condition, and is inadequate. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChroniclePeter Stack
A grandiose cinematic invention, cleverly turning the present-day urban American world on its ear. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
Mystifying, intriguing, even infuriating, it shows what happens when an unconventional talent meets straightforward material.
70
Washington PostDesson Thomson
In a movie in which time travel is used to rectify the past, it's too bad scriptwriters David and Janet Peoples didn't go through the time/space tunnel to work on that first draft again. Read full review
70
Washington PostRita Kempley
A densely plotted, visually dynamic post-apocalyptic thriller. Read full review
60
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
Brad Pitt has fun with his secondary part as a pontificating lunatic, but I wish I'd enjoyed the rest of the cast more. Read full review
50
The New YorkerTerrence Rafferty
But finally the film is no more than a flamboyant curiosity, replacing the spooky obsessiveness of "La Jetée" with a much tamer kind of weirdness. Also with Brad Pitt, in a showy role as a voluble lunatic; he's dreadful. Read full review
40
TimeRichard Corliss
Intent on both dazzling and punishing the viewer, Gilliam gets lost in creepy spectacle and plenty of old film clips (notably "Vertigo"). But at the sight of three giraffes crossing a city bridge, you'll think of a more recent movie. A bad one. [8 Jan 1996, p.69]
40
VarietyEmanuel Levy
Gilliam's work is long on sensibility, short on sense. Read full review
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