Despite starring in nearly 3 dozen $100 million grossing films, Brad Pitt remains bluntly apologetic about not being content or satisfied with one of the most famous movies that helped shoot him to unparalleled fame in the latter half of the 90s.
In one of the films, however, starring alongside Bruce Willis who was an already established action movie star at the time, Pitt not only held his own but often surpassed and overshadowed the performances of his co-star in the narrative as the mentally unsound inmate of an asylum.
Brad Pitt’s Reservations Against the Finale of 12 Monkeys
Upon its premiere, the 1995 film 12 Monkeys became a cult classic for numerous reasons, but Brad Pitt‘s presence in it, for one, established the then-emerging actor’s talents as stretching far beyond looking like a portrait-worthy hunk, renowned for Thelma & Louise and Interview With the Vampire. It founded his skillset which extended to places reserved for the naturally gifted creative artists who imbibed so much of the world around them as to reflect those states of mind and matter through their works in film.
But Brad Pitt could not portray what he needed to in the film’s second half and that remained a perpetual source of annoyance for the now matured and veteran actor. In an interview with The New York Times in December 2019, Pitt claimed:
“I nailed the first half of 12 Monkeys, [but] I got the second half all wrong. That performance bothered me because there was a trap in the writing. It’s not the writing’s fault, but it was something that I couldn’t figure out. I knew in the second half of the film I was playing the gimmick of what was real in the first half — until the last scene — and it bugged the [expletive] out of me.”
Pitt, who portrays Jeffrey Goines in the film, becomes intrinsically albeit inadvertently the pawn in a time loop paradox that causes him to become a key player in the film’s developmental arc. The role earned him his first Academy Award nomination in the Best Actor in a Supporting Role category at the 68th Oscars.
12 Monkeys Becomes an Instant Cult Classic
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With a brutalist structure to the entire film’s framework, 12 Monkeys comes off as equal parts horror thriller and a sci-fi dystopian adventure drama. With Bruce Willis spearheading the show from the vanguard, there isn’t much that Brad Pitt could do within the limited screen time he was given. Despite this fact, the actor leaves an unforgettable and inimitable reaction to the film.
Brad Pitt’s portrayal of Jeffrey Goines still persists as one of his best and most versatile on-screen roles. The actor, despite his reservations against the film, did deliver a cohesive narrative, helping close out one of the most popular dystopian time travel films to exist in the canon of sci-fi films.
12 Monkeys currently holds an 8/10 rating on IMDb and 88% on Rotten Tomatoes. The film is available for streaming on Hulu.
Source: The New York Times
