![]() ![]() It's a cop buddy movie about a political conspiracy, ranging roughly from 1863, when gold intended for Lee's army is stolen, to 2004, when it may be used to finance a political campaign. When the two selves make contact, they are immediately processed by a computer morphing program which melts them into one another with some of the same fearsome consequences that made life miserable for the poor silver guy in " Terminator 2: Judgment Day." "Timecop" throws everything into the pot. The rules are, you cannot touch "yourself" without setting up a fearsome rent in the fabric of time. Even in the last frames of the film, we are being presented with paradoxes, as when a weary timecop ( Jean-Claude Van Damme), having battled through the decades to set things right, returns home and is greeted by a child he has never seen before, who cries out, " Dad!" What and where is the person, identical to Van Damme, who the child has known as Dad? Doesn't that mean there is an extra timecop around? What happens when they meet? Ah, but the movie has already answered that question, in a scene where a time-traveling evil U.S. "Timecop," a low-rent "Terminator," is the kind of movie that is best not thought about at all, for that way madness lies. And furthermore, how can a traveling timecop return to the present from the past without, in effect, traveling into the future? You see what we're up against here. That is because "you can travel back in time, but not into the future, because the future hasn't happened yet." Yes, but once you do travel back in time, the present becomes the future that has not yet happened. "Timecop" is rated R for considerable violence and profanity, along with a couple of explicit sex scenes with nudity.Well, says the movie, the present is defined as Now. (And maybe it's good news that he's making another film with Hyams.) But in the hands of a skilled director such as Hyams, he taps into his best and most charming assets. ![]() Just don't think about it too much the plot does not bear scrutiny in retrospect.Īs for Van Damme, he's still not much of an actor. (I am informed by women who have seen the preview for this movie that Van Damme doing the splits on a kitchen counter is, all by itself, enough to get them in the theater.) This leads to all kinds of complicated situations involving characters who travel back a decade and meet themselves, which in turn leads to events that alter what "Star Trek" would call the space-time continuum.ĭirector Peter Hyams is great at action and suspense - check out "Running Scared," "2010" or "Outland." But he always has trouble with story implausibilites - check out those same films.Īs with all of his pictures, however, "Timecop" is slick, moves well and is filled with memorable set-pieces. Van Damme doesn't really want to mess around with changes in history until he discovers that his wife was murdered during a skirmish brought on by the senator's time-travel manipulations. Eventually, however, he discovers that an evil senator (Ron Silver) is the head of a time-traveling criminal ring, organized to collect big bucks so he can mount a monumental presidential campaign.Īlong the way, there is a prominent subplot that has Van Damme coming up with a way to save his wife (Mia Sara), who was killed a decade earlier. In 1994 an American scientist creates a means of breaking the time barrier, so the government sets up a law enforcement unit to keep potential bad guys from traveling to the past to cash in on historical knowledge.Īs the time frame moves forward to 2004, Van Damme is a maverick cop assigned to bring back such lawbreakers. The story is time-travel stuff, which is always problematic. Still, undiscriminating action fans will probably have a good time. (Including a couple of unnecessary sex scenes.) (Steven Seagal, are you listening?)īut in terms of plot and direction, there are loopholes galore and too much in-your-face audience-pummeling for my taste. There's even a gag about Van Damme's occasionally sounding unintelligible. The special-effects are first-rate in what is obviously a big-budget production and Van Damme himself has learned the Schwarzenegger lesson - smile, flash your natural charisma and don't take yourself too seriously. "Timecop" is the best Jean-Claude Van Damme movie yet.
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