You know what crazy is? Crazy is majority rules! (Twelve Monkeys (DVD))

Member Name: Brett Bligh

Product:	Twelve Monkeys (DVD)
Date:	30/01/01 (80 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: a good film; good quality sound; riveting accompanying documentary.

Disadvantages: non-anamorphic film print (why oh why!?!).

Wiping out the human race? That’s a great idea. That’s great. But more of a long-term thing. I mean, first we have to focus on more immediate goals.

– Jeffrey Goines, Twelve Monkeys.


THE FILM

In 2035 humankind’s remnants live in squalid conditions underground, necessary because the Earth’s surface has been rendered uninhabitable due to a virus strain spread across the world in a very short period of time during the year 1996 which wiped out most of the population, supposedly spread by an insane cult known as the Army of the Twelve Monkeys.

Cole, ably played by Bruce Willis, is a man haunted by visions of his own death in an airport and who becomes the latest ‘volunteer’ sent back in time by scientists to obtain a pure sample of the bacterial strain behind the plague. When he enters the time machine to find himself propelled not to 1996, but to 1990, his ramblings about a post-apocalyptic future cause him to be incarcerated in a mental institution, where he is treated by Dr. Kathryn Railly, and where he meets up with Jeffrey Goines, a fellow inmate, who is the son of a famous scientist and with whom he discusses the extermination of the human race, and who also arranges for his escape.

Returned to 2035, Cole explains the error and pleads to be allowed another attempt, this time materialising successfully in 1996 after a period of a few minutes in a wartime scenario in which he is shot in the leg. He kidnaps Railly and the two of them dash across the country, Cole anxiously searching for the Army of the Twelve Monkeys whilst Railly attempts to convince him that he is, in fact, delusional and needs help. Eventually Cole begins to doubt his own sanity, becoming increasingly unsure of what is real and what imagined as time progresses…


THE DISC

 Region: 2 (PAL encoding).

 Type and case: DVD9, in an oversize jewel case.


 Running time: 124 minutes approx.

 Picture format: 1.85:1 non-anamorphic (letterbox) widescreen.

I have to say that, personally, this was a major disappointment. After seeing many discs with excellent sound and picture quality but who failed to impress with the DVD extras, I was finally looking forward to a disc which managed to rise to the challenge of having all three. Having seen that the audio was Dolby Digital 5.1 from the packaging, and knowing that a substantial documentary was included on the disc as an extra, it was very disheartening to play the film and find an inferior letterbox print was included on the disc. I have already decided that any DVD containing a non-anamorphic letterbox print will gain no more than 3 stars from me, and I consider the rating I thus gave to this title a shame, since the rest of the DVDs features were actually quite acceptable.


 Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1.

 Subtitles: English.

 Extras: ‘The Hamster Factor’, an in-depth documentary about the making of the film.

The Hamster Factor is really a very good documentary, made by a production team who followed director Terry Gilliam’s production from the very beginning; in fact, the team were working at Gilliam’s behest, since after the problems he had encountered with studio executives on a previous film, ‘Brazil’, he wanted everything he did on this production to be fully caught on camera so that he would have evidence to back up any case he made in the event of the film falling to pieces.

The team actually do get a glimpse of almost every stage of production design, including some of the very tense moments, such as the time Gilliam is so furious with those around him that he suggests they hire a new director. The documentary title, incidentally, refers to an incident in which Terry Gilliam insisted that a rather complex and expensive film
sequence be shot and re-shot again and again until an (almost invisible in the frame) hamster spinning on a wheel moved in exactly the way Gilliam had envisioned when the cameras rolled.

The documentary is so engrossing that it most certainly tempts the viewer to go back and watch the whole 2 hours-plus of Twelve Monkeys again immediately, and that, for a documentary of this type, is quite an achievement.



CONCLUSION

After some thought, I would say that I can now pinpoint the three things which I expect from a DVD disc:

1. a good quality print transfer;

2. good quality sound (preferably Dolby Digital 5.1);

3. something substantial in the form of DVD extras — the theatrical trailer and a brief documentary is always a good start.

Having stated this, it becomes obvious that most releases accomplish some of these objectives whilst failing woefully on others. In this case, the good quality sound and excellent documentary as extras were very welcome indeed, but then, with an open goal the only thing standing between the DVD producers and the release of an excellent title, the decision was made to letterbox the film print and be done with it.

Another opportunity missed.

Summary: