I'm playing with a fire so dangerous I could scorch eternity.

This film has been tragically underrated, even by its greatest enthusiasts. Generally, people assume 12 Monkeys must be good. After all, it's got Brucie in a dirty coat, which every pub film-critic will tell you is a good thing, as he's a much better actor than the action genre allows. Oh, and it's directed by Terry Gilliam, the one that drew the foot off Monty Python, and everyone knows he makes good films, you know... kind of weird.

And so the beer-emboldened bar Bresson will lean too close and the last recommendation on this film that you'll hear, before the fumes overcome you, will probably be this:

'It's like a time-travel film, but really clever, 'cause, y'see, thing ish, you never know if the time traveller's real, or mad.'

Oh bravo. You spotted that kind of subtle insane asylum theme, I take it, not to mention the slightly silly bit where John Cole declares himself insane and starts waving to the police. And, to give them a little more credit, perhaps they noted some of the more subtle signs, like the scene where Cole observes a patient entering a hospital scanner, which precedes him using a similar device to travel in time.

But all these smug people are failing to realise that they have played entirely into Gilliam's hands. Just as Brazil is utterly different to 1984 in one fundamental respect, so 12 Monkeys is about so much more than John Cole's questionable sanity.

So, aware that I've inadvertantly insulted about half of the good people who've reviewed this film already on Epinions, I shall leave Gilliam's obvious intention for a while and talk about the film on a more detailed level.

Sometime in the late 1990s, we are told, billions of us were wiped out by a mystery plague. The survivors live underground, and it looks like quite a lot of us are in prison. John Cole is a man with a violent history, selected to observe the world above. Returning from this mission, he is then sent back in time, to try and gather information about how the virus was released. On his arrival, he is disorientated and, gabbling about being from the twenty-first century, he is quickly locked up in an asylum with an entertainingly loopy Brad Pitt. After quite a few unpleasantly saliva-rich sequences, he vanishes from a locked cell.

Returning several years later in our time, Cole kidnaps and strikes up a bizarre relationship with his former psychiatrist, who has set up as an author. Cole is obsessed with tracking down the army of the twelve monkeys, who future authorities have decided were the terrorist organisation responsible for releasing the virus. He renews his relationship with Brad Pitt's character, terrified that he has planted the seeds of armageddon himself in returning to the past. Then he disappears again.

By the time he reappears, Madeleine Stowe has become convinced of Cole's sincerity. She has started harrassing the army of the twelve monkeys herself, and helps Cole disguise himself so he can try and stay in the past. Unfortunately, everything falls apart at the end, in a conclusion that's foreshadowed in the most literal sense possible, but which makes a certain neat sense.

The overall tone of the film is bleak. After all, its central character is a man who is gathering information from a society he knows is about to be decimated. And he keeps hearing voices, cutting out his teeth (apparently they contain radio transmitters to the future) and drooling.

But in spite of this, Gilliam's Python heritage shines through a couple of times. The true agenda of the army of the twelve monkeys is a gloriously extravagant moment of relief in the build-up to the dramatic climax, and Brad Pitt's sporadic crazed monologues come across as the sort of thing you can imagine John Cleese muttering in his sleep.

The film is also New Wave in much of its style. Now, New Wave is a term that's grossly misused by a lot of people, so let's clarify. The original New Wave movement was a reaction against glossy literary adaptations, it concerned itself with making cinema, rather than filming novels. And so we see grimy American streets in an almost documentary-style rather than the corridors of power. And cinematic references abound, from Godard (hiding from the police in the cinema) to Hitchcock (the films that are on when they do so) and back again. Gilliam exhibits a casual disinterest in depicting a coherent future society, he is more interested in our contemporary culture of alienation that would lead to the flourishing of individuals insane enough to wipe out humanity. This film's supporting players are the insane, the homeless, New Age vegetarian animal rights activists and petty criminals. Dr Railly is the one 'normal' person in all this chaos, as Gilliam takes us on a voyage through our own dark undercurrents. And she finds the seamy streets a much more convincing reality than her own academic world.

On the other hand, there's all the religious elements around. John Cole's initials are the same as a certain guerilla carpenter, of course, but this character is also specifically charged with saving humanity. He even dies for our sins, to rise again an innocent child. There's crucifixion imagery on one occasion as he faces the future scientists.

But this is a satire of Christianity, not a tribute. Cole is indeed a Messiah figure, but one who is distinctly disappointed when he arrives for his second coming. This Christ returns to find that his disciples (the 12 Monkeys) have twisted and distorted his ideas about humanity and its destiny. A neatly subtle turn of script, I felt.

But as for the main question on everyone's mind, the one that causes them to ignore all the other interesting subtexts, Cole's sanity.

The second time that Cole travels to our time, just prior to our destruction, Dr Kathryn Railly is giving a lecture to promote her new book about the Cassandra complex. Cassandra, she reminds the audience, was the daughter of Priam that foretold the fall of Troy but was ignored by everyone. The prophet that knows the future, but whom noone believes. After the scene with the signing session, this concept appears to be neatly forgotten.

Now, think hard, next time you're holding forth in the bar about how the parallels between Cole's future scientists and his panel at the asylum show that he's clearly schizophrenic. Bear in mind how heavily the director's touch permeates this whole film. Yes, Cole is unstable, but he is also the central character. The film is told entirely from his point of view, and it is the diseased future which his reality. A psychotic from the future is as much a prophet as a sane one.

I'll spell it out. Gilliam has gone out of his way to illustrate the Cassandra complex by directing his film in such a way as to cast doubt on the reliability of its narrator. Cole is from the future, we are told as much by such sincere and authenticating cinematic devices as captions, and detailed footage of a future Earth. The predictions he manages to make about the boy stuck in the well, and about Railly's voicemail message, could only be made by someone who knows the future. The fact that we doubt him is the work of a master and greatly under-appreciated director, showing how easy it is to doubt the truth. Even as we are invited, briefly, to sneer at the Trojans for not listening to the perfectly sensible advice of the original Cassandra, so we fall into Gilliam's trap by doubting the sanity of a character who shows us the darkest side of the human condition.

And, yes, Bruce wears a dirty coat. Get over it.