![]() Melissa’s death and the destruction of Walker’s life isn’t made memorably due to lacking direction from Hyams. The Action: Timecop is indisputably an action movie, but it’s rather stingy on providing action scenes for over half of its runtime, although Van Damme makes the few interspersed sequences before the third act good enough. Verheiden tries to squeeze in some bits for the supporting characters, like Fielding’s birthday being on the day she and Walker go back to 1994, but none of that means anything since all but the antagonist is unremarkably scripted. While that makes for an easy to despise antagonist, it’s Silver’s dry, glib delivery that makes him memorable. Everything about him screams sleazebag: he’s violent towards his assistants, petty about miscommunication, and greedy to a fault. Or, more accurately, a comic pulp character as Verheiden and co-creator Mike Richardson started with Timecop being a comic miniseries. Hyams doesn’t play coy about McComb’s villainy, which allows for his scummy personality to get ample time in the limelight. ![]() In the decade that followed, Walker seems to have gotten more cynical, untrusting of his TEC compatriots, and obsessed with his wife’s passing, repeating a recording of them together so often he can quote every word from it. Apart from his relationship with Melissa, who’s equally blank, and a nice house destroyed in the attack which killed his wife, the audience isn’t let in on what life was like prior to the movie’s events. Walker doesn’t really get a personality written for him, it’s Van Damme’s natural charm that keeps the character ever so slightly above average. The Characters: Barring the bizarre names that the writer evidently thought would be commonplace in 2004 like “Matuzak” and “Spota”, the characters are painfully generic and feel relegated to more linear, generic cop-gone-rogue movies. The idea made an opportunity for convention-breaking, but the execution brings it all back down to average. The rules, apart from people only being able to travel backwards in time, not forwards, are unclear, leading to a shaky way of stitching a sci-fi façade on top of a regular renegade cop plot. Matuzak lets Walker, along with IA operator Fielding (Reuben), investigate 1994 McComb to attempt to prove his guilt of rigging the future from the past, but changes are made and now Walker is on his own in his quest. Walker and McComb are well aware of each other which is an interesting touch considering most actioners create the warring factions after the plot’s impetus. One man tries to make money off future oil prices and once he’s caught by Walker, admits that McComb hired him to get money for his presidential bid. It’s not all that clear how a person who goes backwards upwards of 70 years can still be middle-aged in 2004, considering they’re still occupying the same body, wouldn’t they be nearing 100 years old and on their deathbeds in the current year? Ten years later, Walker still works for the TEC, cracking down on those who’d seek to go to the past to make fortunes in the present. Employed by the TEC is Walker (Van Damme), who’s the victim of a break-in that kills his wife Melissa (Sara). With this precedent for a time-jumping black market, the TEC is created with Matuzak (McGill) directing its protection of history’s progression. ![]() In then-present 1994, a Justice Department appointee is sent to convince the Senate, including McComb (Silver), for approval of the Time Enforcement Commission (TEC) as time travel has just been invented and used to steal gold from 1863 Confederates. The story it tells doesn’t really go into depth about the woes of the subject, but it makes an appealing backdrop for a regular good versus evil story. The Plot: As is the case for most movies involving time travel, Hyams’ movie has stakes on its side, with the past and future in jeopardy thanks to mankind’s meddling. It’s about a time-regulating officer fighting the plans of a politician to change the past and control the future. ![]() Robot, Shadowhunter), and Mia Sara (Legend, A Stranger Among Us). Timecop was directed by Peter Hyams ( End of Days, 2010), written by Mark Verheiden (My Name is Bruce, Swamp Thing) and stars Jean-Claude Van Damme ( The Last Mercenary, We Die Young), Ron Silver (Find Me Guilty, Reversal of Fortune), Bruce McGill (Rizzoli & Isles, The Lookout), Gloria Reuben (Mr.
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