Director Terry Gilliam delivers an intelligent sci-fi film, intricate in plot that provides possibly Willis’ best performance (at least of the ones I’ve seen). Is James Cole (Willis) really a time traveller or just going insane?

Cole claims humanity is nearly wiped out by a genetically engineered virus with the survivors struggling for existence underground. He claims they send him back in time to obtain a pure, unmutated strain of the virus in the hope they can devise a response. But the trauma of repeated time-travel to a world he knows will die leads him to question his own sanity: is his ‘future knowledge’ a bizarre hallucination?

This stands as a fantastic film simply because it can take several viewings to sort it out. The growing trust and love between Cole and psychiatrist Dr. Kathryn Railly (Stowe) over his time jumps is developed nicely - will she believe his prediction before he stops believing them himself? The film explores the paradox’s of time-travel, mental illness, and biotechnology sensibly and thought provokingly, and as you might expect from Gilliam has some lovely visuals. The DVD extras talk about how audiences in preview screenings “didn’t get it” and how pressurized Gilliam was to make a simpler movie.

Thank goodness he didn’t!