The perfection of time travel brings with it new opportunities for criminals. The government sets up a special police force (T.E.C.) to ensure the new technology isn't abused. Max Walker, one of these timecops learns of a corrupt politician's plot to become president using the device. Senator McComb discovers Walker on his trail and the real action begins–in Walker's own past! To monitor the illegal use of time travel, the government founds the Time Enforcement Commission, a high-tech police department under Senator Aaron McComb's supervision. However, ten years later, in 2004, the devoted TEC agent, Max Walker, who is still reeling from the untimely and rather mysterious loss of his wife, is summoned to unearth a conspiracy which dates back in time. Will the haunted Timecop use this advanced technology to thwart the evil plans of the megalomaniac who is behind a string of hideous time-crimes? In the end, will Max tamper with the past to right the wrongs, no matter the cost? Once again I've taken a trip down memory lane and revisited a movie I haven't seen in years. Sometimes you find that a movie you revisit is as good as you remember. Fewer times you'll find that the movie was better than you remember. Most of the time you'll find that the movie is worst than you remember. Timecop is of the third category.<br/><br/>I love time travel and time loop movies. It is such a fascinating concept and can be done in a myriad of ways. But time travel and time loop movies are delicate and need to be handled with care. As it is these movies will be flawed because there is always a conundrum with time travel. My favorite such conundrum is: <br/><br/>If I stub my toe and go back in time one minute to prevent myself from stubbing my toe, thereby removing the impetus for my time travel, did I ever go back in time? Did I ever stub my toe?<br/><br/>So, because of inherent conundrums like this there will always be flaws in time travel movies. But having said that, some movies are more flawed than others and Timecop is on the more flawed side.<br/><br/>The premise of Timecop is simple: time travel exists but an agency is needed to prevent tampering with the past because of the well known ripple effect that can and will occur. This agency called the TEC (Time Enforcement Commission) has the technology to monitor history looking for irregular activity (how they monitor the entirety of history I don't know). If they detect any big irregularities they send an agent back to prevent the temporal tampering.<br/><br/>There were a lot of problems I had with the movie with Jean-Claude Van Damme's acting being at the top of the list. When I was younger I could watch one JCVD flick after another completely ignoring his terrible acting just to see him kick the crap out of somebody. Well, now in my older years I want more than splits, kicks and fighting with dozens of jump cuts to make it look more spectacular. But putting JCVD aside the movie still had flaws that bothered me; the biggest being the breadcrumbs left everywhere. What do I mean by that? If you're going back to the past to alter it for whatever reason, knowing the potential impacts it could have on the future you'd have to have as little futuristic items on your person as possible. You wouldn't want someone in 1960 getting their hands on your iPhone; or worse, your world history book. Timecop was a little too sloppy with that.<br/><br/>Then there is the other time travel conundrum that's never done right:<br/><br/>If I go back to the past to alter something, the moment I alter it my memories should be altered likewise. <br/><br/>For whatever reason, whenever a time traveler goes to the past, alters something, then returns to the present, his memories are unchanged. He discovers all of the new events as if he just arrived on the planet that day. <br/><br/>My point in it all is that Timecop had the regular time travel flaws and then some. But even with those flaws I still rate it a 6/10 because this is a 23 year old movie now!! This is from my younger and more innocent years, I can't just completely dump on it. Back then JCVD was the man even if he preferred his feet when a gun was more effective. Furthermore, this was an early time travel movie when all many had as a reference was Back to the Future, Terminator and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. The inconsistencies in this movie were trivial in 1994. Timecop is not the best time travel movie–or any kind of movie–but it's still cool Reading through their IMDb pages just now, I noticed that director Peter Hyams and action star Jean-Claude Van Damme will soon collaborate again on a thriller named "Enemies Closer". I think that's particularly good news for Van Damme, as it's my own personal and humble opinion that he accomplished his best films working with Hyams. Seemingly Hyams was the only director who brought a proper balance between demonstrating his martial arts skills and actually giving the opportunity to try and act! "Sudden Death" is a straightforward but extremely competent action flick set in a limited arena ("Die Hard" in a hockey stadium, in fact) and this "Timecop" is a more ambitious and polished Sci-Fi thriller revolving around time traveling. Hyams is more of an expert in the domain of Sci-Fi (with other semi-classic titles on his repertoire such as "Capricorn One", "Outland" and the hate-it-or-love-it cult movie "2010") and that clearly shows during the impressively staged time-catapulting sequences and the overall ease with which the convoluted and paradoxical subject matter is handled. On the other hand, the supposedly hi-tech futuristic gadgets and advanced technology looks incredibly banal and clichéd in my opinion, like for example the voice-operated cars and televisions in 2004. The plot is actually very similar to that of "Back to the Future, Part II" except – of course – with karate and gunfire instead of DeLoreans. It's all about Van Damme, as Time Enforcement Corps agent Max Walker, traveling back and forth in time to prevent naughty people from meddling with the future before it occurs. The sleazy Senator McComb teleports himself back from 2004 to 1994 to prevent his younger self from making the wrong financial decisions that will cost him the Presidential elections and, during the attempt to stop him, Max Walker discover the exact reasons why his wife got murdered that same year. Although he'll never win any Oscars, I really think Van Damme gives an adequate performance in "Timecop", with a word of thanks to the script and the supportive cast including Mia Sara and Bruce McGill. Best performance comes (as all too often in action movies) from the villain, with Ron Silver depicting a gloriously hateful corrupt politician. It's never made clear what happens to the time-traveling vehicles when arriving in the past. At least the DeLorean in "Back to the Future" always stayed with its passengers. As a shoot-'em-up, blast-'em-to-pieces film, it's not half bad. As a futuristic time travel movie, however, it has some very serious problems.
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354 weeks ago