TIMECOP
[Spoilers]
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1994 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Jean-Claude Van Damme is a
policeman charged with stopping time travel related
crime. He is on the trail of a politician played by Ron
Silver who travels back from 2004 to steal and to change
history. This is a nice looking film, particularly in
its 1920s sets, but what Van Damme does to the villains
is about what the script does to logic. Rating: low +1
(-4 to +4)
It is 1863 and a shipment of gold for the Confederacy is stolen by a highwayman sporting a laser-guided machine gun. This is a time travel crime and that makes it particularly dangerous since even a small change to the past could completely change the future. That is why the government has created the Time Enforcement Commission or TEC. And one of its chief operatives is Max Walker (Jean-Claude Van Damme). The TEC is watched over by Senator McComb (Ron Silver). But McComb has been seduced by the power time travel gives and is hatching his own illegal plans to make himself President. Walker knows his chief enemy is the Senator who controls his agency. But his efforts are sabotaged by widespread corruption in the TEC going back to McComb. Complicating things, now he is saddled with an inexperienced partner, Fielding (played by Gloria Reuben), and he would rather be working alone. (Gee, what an original plot complication!) Walker must go back with Fielding to 1994, that pivotal year when i) the TEC was founded, ii) mysterious thugs killed Walker's wife (Mia Sara), and iii) McComb got control ofa major high-TEC and high-tech corporation. That 1994 must have been a pretty exciting year to live!
Like a lot of current films the look of TIMECOP seems to take precedence over the acting or plot. The film is directed by Peter Hyams who proved in films like OUTLAND that he is much more into the look of science fiction than the thought behind it. In fact, he wears an unusual pairing of hats on this film. He is not just the director of the film, he is also the director of photography and some of the effects are effective. Hyams uses a nice effect of warping space to show people's arrival in a new time, though it looks related to the invisibility effect in PREDATOR. The rocket sled that launches time travel is a bit melodramatic and the reason why this acceleration is needed is never explained, unless it is some sort of tribute to BACK TO THE FUTURE. It does contribute to the effect of a film that is generally fairly slickly mounted. Not all of the visuals are as good, however. One false move is the production design of the 2004 cars, which apparently have evolved to look almost like DAMNATION ALLEY armored vehicles by 2004. Certainly the look of cars is intended to change more in the next ten years than it did in the last ten.
Other script touches are about what one could expect. There was entirely too many fights for my taste, but after all, this is a Jean- Claude Van Damme movie. One could complain about the Bondisms--the wisecracks after violent fights--but it seems that they have become
Timecop September 19.1994 Page2
inseparable from action films. There is some reasonable wit in the film. There is a nice bit connected with a piece of advice that that McComb gives his younger self. But the nicest quip is the choice of end-title music.
As an actor Jean-Claude Van Damme has playing an expert Belgian kick-boxer down very well. I suppose that is better than him not being able to play an expert Belgian kick-boxer, but it still does not amount to breadth. For once he has co-stars who have previously been in films that do not feature fighting. Ron Silver is an actual actor in the non-exploitation film sense. He may not have a lot of real acting to do here other than to seem sinister, but he at least does his villain with dignified restraint. Gloria Reuben and Mia Sara are along as co- stars but neither of them have anything special to do in their roles. Mia Sara has been around in films at least since FERRIS BEULLER'S DAY OFF, Reuben is a relative newcomer, and each seems to do what the script requires and avoids walking into furniture, but neither shows any real flash.
This is a film with too little science fictional thought and too much karate kicking. But parts are undeniably fun. I give it a low +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER
Some of the concepts of TIMECOP should be discussed in an evaluation of the film and I hope I don't come off like the film reviewer (I think from the New York Times) whose review of DESTINATION MOON said that it was absurd and that even the children in the audience could tell the producers that in space rockets don't work because there is nothing to push against. Don't trust a film reviewer's knowledge, including mine.
Time enforcement is an old idea in science fiction harkening back at least to Jack Williamson's LEGION OF TIME and Poul Anderson's TIME PATROL. Generally a feature of time travel stories are time paradoxes, most of which hark from the paradox that a time traveler could go back in time and kill his parents before they bear him. Then he would never have existed, so there would have been nobody to kill his parents. Also often a feature of time travel stories are extra rules supposedly fall out of the physics of time travel. These may or may not bear close scrutiny. One that might make sense might be that an equal mass has to be sent in the opposite direction in time or that you are limited in the amount of magnetic metal that can go through time. Rules often make less sense. THE TERMINATOR assumed only living matter can be sent. No other physical phenomenon can detect living from non- living matter, but I would be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt if they just followed that rule. But, of course various parts of the human body like hair are not really living matter either. If only living matter went through time portals, a time traveler would arrive at best bald. THE TERMINATOR seemed to miss that detail and did not shave Michael Biehn.
TIMECOP shows signs that the authors thought about *having* rules and paradoxes, but not much about the rules and paradoxes themselves. The special rules include this concept that "the same object cannot occupy the same place at the same time." I think that the principle is that different objects cannot do that. But what generally happens there is that they rebound off each other. Technically speaking, the same object ALWAYS occupies the same place at the same time. Actually the rule as applied in the film seems to be that is a time traveler comes in contact with his previous self the two annihilated each other. But you have very little matter in common with yourself of ten years ago. Nearly all (or is it actually all?) of the living matter in your body from ten years ago has been replaced. Even if that was not true and there was some point on the surface that had not changed, you would have to get those two points to come in contact. It would not suffice that your left hand from 1994 and your right shoulder from 2004 came in contact. This whole rule of annihilation is more a plot contrivance than having anything much to do with logic. It is like having vampires killed by sunlight.
Mike Richardson and Mark Verheiden don't actually seem to understand what makes time paradoxes work. In the film Fielding@2004 (if I may coin a notation) is killed in 1994. Back in 2004 there is no sign that Fielding lived that last decade from 1994 to 2004. That would be true if Fielding@1994 had been killed, but there seems not to make sense as a result of Fielding@2004 being killed. At the end of the film Walker has nullified his whole reason to have gone to 1994 and nobody remembers that he went. But he obviously is returning from some place. Where do people think he is returning from? And while I am asking questions, how do you carbon-date gold? And what does it even mean to carbon-date gold?
Mark R. Leeper
mark.leeper@att.com
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