ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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Imagine a new kind of policeman — a cop who pounds a beat with boundaries that start in the “now” and reach back into the past. He hunts bad guys who threaten the present by changing history, a crime which is punishable by death.

This is not a movie about a cop who writes speeding tickets to guys driving DeLoreans . . .
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Timecop (1994)

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For me, this is inferior to the best time travel films (THE TIME MACHINE, TIME AFTER TIME, etc.).

As a Van Damme vehicle, it's typical. So we end up with a rather generic action sci-fi piece, from my standpoint, some of it copying the tone of TERMINATOR 2 (1991), which probably influenced many sci-fi action films in the nineties. It's not bad; it just doesn't rise above the mediocre.

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I think the complexity which someone else may gleam from this is that it switches to different time periods. It starts with a short scene during the Civil War — a dreary one with gunfire. Then there are some scenes in 1994, when Van Damme's character loses his wife to paid assassins. Then we switch to a scene in 1929 — the start of the Depression.

And finally, to the future of 2004 (now, the past), when time travel is a reality to be regulated (by TEC, a new government agency — the Time Enforcement Commission).

I was amused by the efforts here to show futuristic automobiles — 2004 is now over a decade in the past; according to this film, we should all be driving tank-like vehicles now. I'd forgotten that this was based on a comic book; it shows — much of this is very simplistic.

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One example of this simplicity is a statement made, offhand, near the beginning — a bureaucrat states that time travel to the future is not possible, because that hasn't happened yet. So, we're left with time travel to the past. We just have to accept this limitation and be done with it.

Then there's the warning that two identical objects cannot occupy the same space; i.e., two versions of the same person better not touch each other. However, a person who is 10 years older is not identical to his past self, is he? Also, even if a person physically touches another, aren't they still separated by molecule-sized space? Whatever.


BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)