The major motion-picture TIMECOP stars European kick-boxer and part-time actor Jean-Claude Van Damme as Washington D.C. cop Max Walker (hardcore hero name? Check) who joins a top-secret police agency after his wife is blown up. He also grows his hair long so we know how filled with anger he is. The new agency is dedicated to kicking the faces of people who travel back in time and mess around. Needless to say, Marty McFly would have gotten his butt-whooped. There’s also the corrupt Senator Aaron McComb (played by Ron “The Scar” Silver) who uses time travel to fund his bid to become President; him and Van Damme have a conflict of interest.
The movie has a pretty solid opening once you get past the bland credits. It starts with some Confederate soldiers transporting gold to somewhere that isn’t important. They’re met on the rainy trail by some guy with bad teeth who proceeds to demand their gold. The Rebs laugh and are promptly killed with futuristic guns. I can tell they’re guns because they fire bullets and I can tell they’re from the future because they have a bunch of crap on them. My only guess is that the extra junk on the guns are some kind of human homing devices since out of all the bullets that are fired not a single horse was wounded. You’re welcome PETA.
The thing that makes TIMECOP a pretty good movie is that it really doesn’t mess around. Within the first 10 minutes there’s a meeting between some government honchos and they explain exactly what the movie will be about; namely there is time travel and we must police it because people are screwing with the past and stealing confederate money. Then, in the next 10 minutes we are introduced to Van Damme and his character is explained. There’s a pretty good scene where he stops a purse-snatcher in a mall by sticking his boot in the kids face and they have this wonderful exchange:
Van Damme – “Read it.”
Snatcher – “Wolverine?”
Van Damme – “Between the lines.”
The kid then returns the purse and goes on to become the CEO of a fortune 500 company. Van Damme then meets his wife, they get it on and then she is blown up because he’s too much of a goodie-good to call in to work.
The movie fast-forwards to the futuristic year of 2004, where all the generic future clichés have come to pass. All the houses are voice-activated and the cars look like five shoe boxes taped together that drive themselves. Van Damme then must go into the past to protect the future or whatever. He’s mostly just trying to stop the evil Senator from becoming President. Ron Silver plays a pretty awesome villain. His best scene was when an underling of his was attempting to give him good advice and Ron Silver slams his head into the side of his limo. That’s the kind of guy he is. “Senator, I think you should have some orange juice with your breakfast because there’s a cold going around the office.” WHAM! Your head’s in a limo.
The best scene in the movie is definitely the battle in the micro-chip factory. Van Damme battles a guy while wielding a giant wrench and also freezes a guy with liquid nitrogen and throws him off a scaffolding. I don’t know whether TIMECOP or DEMOLITION MAN did the “freezing a villain in liquid nitrogen and shattering him” thing first, but TIMECOP could always go into the past and kill DEMOLITION MAN‘s grandparents so it’s never made, so it better keep its yap shut.
There’s a few other battles of note, like Van Damme fighting some dudes who broke into his apartment while wearing nothing but his underpants. There was also a pretty good fight where Van Damme goes into the 1920’s to bring his old-partner to future justice and gets into a rumble with some burly gents. The effects for time travel were pretty good too. I like how it makes it seem difficult to go back in time, not just hopping through a portal or whatever. In the world of the TIMECOP you have to ride a rocket straight at a cement wall and just pray it works, no safety net.
Unfortunately, the ending is pretty anti-climactic and predictable. The futuristic Van Damme with the long hair and stubble spends most of the fight wandering in the woods avoiding conflict while the present day Van Damme is beaten to a pulp by an unnamed goon. Eventually, a showdown between future Van Damme and Ron Silver happens and the villain is defeated by using the time travel no-no that was explained at least five times throughout the movie and you knew they were saving for the big-bad.
All-in-all TIMECOP is a pretty good Van Damme flick, if you like Van Damme flicks. You know what you’re going to get (lots of kicking and splits), but things keep moving and the action is solid. If you don’t like Van Damme, this isn’t the movie that will change your mind, but if you like the styling’s of Ron Silver this is a guaranteed good-time.
