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The intention was to send Cole back to the year the plague occurred, but he accidentally lands a few years earlier instead. This turns out to be critical, but still isn’t as big a deal as the fact that James has no idea how to fit into the 1990s, and it has nothing to do with the fact that he can’t grow a mullet. You might think it would be fun to go back in time and chuckle at how primitive things were, and how simple the people seemed. But it’s more likely you’d be overwhelmed by a sense of frightening unfamiliarity. Without being accustomed to the cultural nuances of the time, you might make an alien of yourself even in your own hometown. The advantage of being from the future might quickly become a liability and the locals might well mistake you for a lunatic.

Imagine a person of modest intelligence sent back to 1965 to warn the government about a future international terrorist network. They’d be led by a shadowy figure that lives in a cave and commands his minions to fly airplanes into buildings and strap bombs to each other. They’d lock you up faster than you could say "Osama Bin Laden," and then MGM would make your story into a Bond movie. It definitely makes the idea of using uneducated convicts for such an important mission look pretty stupid, as Cole’s ranting about viruses and Monkey Armies leads to him being arrested.

He’s placed under the care of a kindly doctor named Reilly (Madeline Stowe), a talented psychiatrist nonetheless plagued with the same sentimental social myopia that plagues all movie scientists. She reluctantly has Cole institutionalized, but takes an interest in him and his story. Inside the asylum, Cole bonds with a fellow patient named Goines (Brad Pitt, channeling Crispin Glover through Tyler Durden). The kid is a manic depressive bowl of wing nuts whose mind is sopping over with apocalyptic conspiracy theories, making him a natural audience for Cole’s doomsday drama. But Goines also seems obsessed with the way a supposedly sane person could be mistaken for disturbed when he’s taken out of context. Not only is this food for thought, but it’s an idea central to the story. Twelve Monkeys encourages the audience to consider the potential lack of difference between someone who’s insane and someone who’s merely eccentric. Cole really might be a time traveling savior or maybe he really is a kook, and his whole “shattered future” sob story is nothing more than a delusion. There’s even the possibility that Goines is less nuts and more a new wave Andy Kaufman whose agenda is simply to make people wonder where the line is between brilliant comedy and utter madness.

The film’s second act wastes no time in pressing the idea as Cole escapes the hospital and makes contact with Railly. Lucky for him, she’s a psychiatrist who knows her way around a field dressing and also happens to have a fondness for apocalypse nuts. Lucky for her, he’s an apocalypse nut who swears he isn’t really nuts. Lucky for them both, she’s written books on the subject and has made this her dominant area of study. Because of this she feels a kinship with Cole, to the point where you have to wonder - does she sense that he’s telling the truth, or is she just a hopeless romantic whose self indulgent flights of fancy happen lend themselves well to her patients’ madness?

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