For some time now, our Roku TV has been showing stills from action movies to entice us to watch one of their (Roku’s) numerous channels; among those stills is one of Jean-Claude Van Damme in the 1994 movie Timecop (Figure 2), helmed by Peter Hyams. Who is also known in the genre for the movies Outland (1981), with Sean Connery and Frances Sternhagen, and 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984), with John Lithgow and Roy Scheider. I didn’t remember a lot about the movie aside from a few key scenes, like the one in Figure 2, showing JCVD’s incredible balance on one leg, and the feeling that I’d liked it. So, off to the old DVD/Blu-Ray shelves to find it. (because our shelves are split into two rooms, that can take a while to read all the spines—they’re only vaguely categorized.) But I found it and we watched it again.
And we enjoyed it. By the way, this is based on a Dark Horse comic, but I haven’t seen it. Here’s what the movie’s all about. In 1994, in this film, someone has invented time travel. Travel into the future is impossible, as it hasn’t happened yet; however, travel into the past is possible—and a Senate subcommittee has been set up to create a Time Enforcement Commission to investigate (and stop) time crimes from being committed. (The reason for this is that changing anything in the past might result in an unrecognizable future—as in Ray Bradbury’s story “The Sound of Thunder,” where a butterfly inadvertently crushed in the Triassic Age completely changes the “present,” i.e., the future. (That’s the Butterfly Time Effect, I guess.)
Jean-Claude plays a cop named Walker (Figure 2), who is being recruited by Commander matuzak to join the Time Enforcement Commission (TCE) as an agent—they’re old friends, and Matuzak knows that Walker has what it takes to do the job. Walker and his wife meet at a mall, and he notices he’s being watched by a couple of goons I call the Mullet Brothers (Figure 3), but thinks nothing of it. Later that night, walker and his wife are attacked by a number of people—apparently for no reason—at their home, and the home is destroyed by a bomb, which also kills Walker’s wife. During the fight, Walker shows why JCVD’s kickboxing and acrobatic skills got him the job. He still loses, and wakes up in the hospital.
Cut to ten years later: it’s now 2004, and Walker is a full-fledged agent of the TEC; one of his assignments is to follow his partner to 1929, where his partner is taking advantage of the crash to grow a portfolio of stocks that will be high-performing in 2004, according to USA Today. After a fight and a fall, Walker arrests his partner and they arrive back in 2004, where the partner is judged for his time crimes and sentenced to death; he is transported back to 1929 and becomes another victim of the crash. This is puzzling—what happened to trial by jury? They saddle walker with an IA (Internal Affairs) partner, Agent Sarah Fielding (Gloria Reuben), as they don’t know for sure whether he’s as crooked as his partner. Walker tries to tell Matuzak that the chairman of the TEC’s Senate Committee, Senator McComb (Ron Silver) was the man who sent his partner back to 1929 to buy those stocks, but without evidence, nothing can be done. The 2004 Walker isn’t clean-cut like the 1994 man (Figure 5), but he’s as dogged as ever, and subtly tells McComb that he will follow McComb until he catches him. “I never give up,” he tells the senator.
Walker and Fielding are sent back to 1994 to investigate a time ripple—an event that shouldn’t be happening—on the agency’s scopes; they find Senator McComb (1994 version) eliminating his partner in the microchip industry—these are specialized microchips that are used in some way in time travel. McComb (2004 version) comes back, accompanied by the Mullet Brothers and other goons, to ensure his earlier self gets the chips; because McComb 2004 needs the money for his Presidential campaign. Another fight ensues, and Fielding is killed. McComb warns his 1994 self not to touch him, as “two identical objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time,” or it will be disastrous. (He also tells him, looking at his waistline, to “lay off the damned jelly beans.” McComb 2004 returns to 2004, followed by Walker. Walker finds that a lot has changed. McComb is now the presidential front-runner and will probably win by a landslide. And he wants the TCA and official time travel abolished. In fact, the Agency is already being shut down, and Matuzak doesn’t know Walker as a personal friend.
And here I must leave you so as not to spoil it if you haven’t seen it. I’ve had to leave out a few significant facts, or gloss over them, for the same reason. I think you’ll find it’s not only a well-written movie, it’s pretty consistent, except for a few goofs. For example, a shipment of stolen Confederate gold has been carbon-dated to the 1860s, but gold is a metal, and can’t be carbon-dated (unless they have some new technology that carbon-dates without carbon). Another one is that if the two objects are separated by ten years, it’s hardly likely that they are, in fact, identical—not only is the clothing different, but after that time, it’s probable that all cells in the body (or most, anyway, especially hair and nails) has been replaced by new cells, which invalidates that particular item, in my opinion. The dialogue is well done, and quite snappy; it’s nice that they gave a large part to a black woman who is self-described as having university degrees and speaking three languages. There’s also a bit of a science-fiction in-joke where the operator of the time machine has photos (supposedly done by him) hung all over his console of Hajime Sorayama’s “sexy robots,” and they also credited Sorayama in the film credits, which sometimes isn’t done. There are also self-driving cars (designed, it appears, by Syd Mead, who’s famous for his movie designs) in 2004.
But in spite of a few goofs, it’s well written and, surprisingly well acted by JCVD, who probably wasn’t picked for his acting skills, but rather for his physical prowess. McGill often plays a character of dubious morality, but here he’s a definite “good guy.” Sara plays a more mature character than in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off; and Silver does his usual turn as a sarcastic badder-than-bad “bad guy.” Altogether a film—especially for 1994—worth watching.
NOTE: This column is in no way written, edited, proofed or composed by AI, though some of my photo editing software uses it in some capacity. This is a human column and will remain so.
If you have any comments on this column, drop me a line. I’m on Facebook, you can PM me on Messenger, or you could email me (stevefah at hotmail dot com). Whether you liked it or no, please let me know. My opinion is, as always, my own, and doesn’t necessarily reflect the views of Amazing Stories or its owner, editor, publisher or other columnists. See you next time!
Steve has been an active fan since the 1970s, when he founded the Palouse Empire Science Fiction Association and the more-or-less late MosCon in Pullman, WA and Moscow, ID, though he started reading SF/F in the early-to-mid 1950s, when he was just a sprat. He moved to Canada in 1985 and quickly became involved with Canadian cons, including ConText (’89 and ’81) and VCON. He’s published a couple of books and a number of short stories, and has collaborated with his two-time Aurora-winning wife Lynne Taylor Fahnestalk on a number of art projects. As of this writing he’s the proofreader for R. Graeme Cameron’s Polar Borealis and Polar Starlight publications. He’s been writing for Amazing Stories off and on since the early 1980s. His column can be found on Amazing Stories most Fridays.
