Timecop
The highest-grossing film of Jean-Claude Van Damme's career, Timecop stars the kickboxing action star as an officer of the Time Enforcement Commission who attempt to prevent those from misusing time travel now that it has been discovered. Aside from a few flashes here and there in the past (the machine only allows you to travel backwards and then return to your own time), the film primarily takes place in two time periods. We get the early 90s where Max and his wife (Mia Sara) are attacked prior to him ever joining the TEC, and we get the near-future or present (ten years later) where Max is a more grizzled veteran of the agency.
All time travel movies need to set up rules how the concept works. Timecop does this and, for the most part, sticks to them. The important notes of this version of time travel are there is only a single timeline, ramifications to that timeline can have immediate effect, and the same matter (meaning the same character) can not occupy the same space in the same time which is why you never want to run into yourself.
Aside from its sci-fi trappings, Timecop is mostly a framework for the usual Van Damme action film. We get plenty of fights and extended stunt sequences. and, even as a futuristic Timecop, Van Damme gets in plenty of kicking even including doing the splits in his apartment to save himself from one attack from what someone in the 90s thought was a futuristic-looking stun gun.
The TEC monitors for events in the timestream and ripples caused by changes. Why the attack on Max isn't noticed, given the gigantic ripples to his life heading into the TEC is one of the biggest plot holes of the film. Another is the method of travel in which the TEC agents leave their present, and return to it, seated in a vehicle but somehow always pop-up in the past walking around. How, exactly, does that work?
Our villain is the unscrupulous Senator Senator Aaron McComb (Ron Silver), who we see is a dick in both the 90s and 2000s, heading up a group of nameless mercenaries. McComb sits on the subcommittee overseeing the TEC and uses its technology to steal from the past to secure money to buy his future (and wipe anyone out of existence who gets in his way). We also get Bruce McGill heading up the TEC and Gloria Reuben as another agent.
Adapted from a comic series, the film would later spawn both a TV series and direct-to-home-video sequel (neither with Van Damme's involvement). The new two-disc collection includes both DVD and Blu-ray versions of the film but is surprisingly sparse on special features.
Watch the trailer- Title: Timecop
- IMDb: link
