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#169 - Timecop
Peter Hyams, 1994
In a world where time travel is used by the U.S. government to retroactively keep the peace, one of its officers must stop a corrupt politician's attempts to alter the past.
While you've got to appreciate the sheer bluntless of a title like Timecop, it's a pity that there's probably a bit too much bluntness in this film for its own good. It makes good on the title's promise by delivering a somewhat hackneyed collection of cop-movie clichés that are only slightly tempered by the usage of time travel, which does play decidedly fast and loose with the rules only as far as it makes for easy entertainment (though there are some egregious qualities to the proceedings, especially when it comes to the shuttlecraft that future cops use to travel to the past). It's not like there aren't a few good moments scattered throughout - Jean-Claude Van Damme's physicality gets memorably demonstrated quite a few times, even if the action scenes do get chopped up a bit too much for the hits to have quite that much impact. There's also a decent villain in the form of Ron Silver's slimy senator and the effects work is aided by the fact that it doesn't need to be remotely realistic. Even when taken as the quick little B-movie that it is, Timecop is still rather underwhelming as its scattered moments of sci-fi weirdness ultimately don't grant much flavour to a generally mediocre piece of work.
Peter Hyams, 1994
In a world where time travel is used by the U.S. government to retroactively keep the peace, one of its officers must stop a corrupt politician's attempts to alter the past.
While you've got to appreciate the sheer bluntless of a title like Timecop, it's a pity that there's probably a bit too much bluntness in this film for its own good. It makes good on the title's promise by delivering a somewhat hackneyed collection of cop-movie clichés that are only slightly tempered by the usage of time travel, which does play decidedly fast and loose with the rules only as far as it makes for easy entertainment (though there are some egregious qualities to the proceedings, especially when it comes to the shuttlecraft that future cops use to travel to the past). It's not like there aren't a few good moments scattered throughout - Jean-Claude Van Damme's physicality gets memorably demonstrated quite a few times, even if the action scenes do get chopped up a bit too much for the hits to have quite that much impact. There's also a decent villain in the form of Ron Silver's slimy senator and the effects work is aided by the fact that it doesn't need to be remotely realistic. Even when taken as the quick little B-movie that it is, Timecop is still rather underwhelming as its scattered moments of sci-fi weirdness ultimately don't grant much flavour to a generally mediocre piece of work.