A fantastic view of a bleak future created by the outbreak of a virus in the year 1996 and an attempt made to discover a solution by returning to the time of the outbreak. James Cole (Bruce Willis) is forced to travel back in time to periods between 1990-96 to try and discover who or what was responsible for the outbreak, all the while being monitored from the future by scientists and administrators. Cole is unsurprisingly considered to be crazy in 1990 and is sent to a mental institute where he meets Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt), whom he comes to believe is the culprit of the outbreak of the virus. Dr. Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stow) becomes interested in Cole because of her research about doomsdayers, one of which Cole becomes because of his talk of the outbreak of a deadly virus. Together with Railly, Cole attempts to unravel the mystery that is the past of the 12 Monkeys.