A corrupt senator, played by the late, great Ron Silver - in a scenery-chewing turn that is by far the best thing about the film - is trying to become the next president by changing history. But you can go back … it's like throwing a stone in a lake and there are ripples, except they are ripples in time." (You sense the makers are rather pleased with the sophistication of what they're serving up.)Īnyway, we dwell in 1994 long enough to see see Walker's wife murdered before jumping forward to 2004 to find him a grizzled, morose time cop still obsessing over old videos of his late wife (at this point, incidentally, we have voice-controlled driverless cars - nice prediction, guys). As one wonk explains at the beginning: "You can't go into the future because it hasn't happened yet. Max Walker (everyone should have their name appropriated for a Hollywood blockbuster hero), is drafted into a top-secret US government agency with the job of going back in time to catch baddies who are trying to change history to their own advantage. We open in 1994 (the year of the film's release). I think there's something oddly poignant about his performance, especially when we know where his career went afterwards. Everybody involved, from the director down, is clearly phoning it in. The time machine is basically a rocket-powered Go-kart. There's also a rather sad, lowish-budget feel about the whole thing. Pumped-up European star with funny accent who can't really act? Check time travel? Yup? Lots and lots of gratuitous violence? You got it. Which he does, a lot.) And, yes, this was clearly focus-grouped from the start by people looking for the next Schwarzenegger. ("Van Damme is compelling only when he takes his clothes off," was another's verdict. When all's said and done Timecop is basically "a low-rent Terminator", as one critic put it. Our hero in Timecop is poor old Jean-Claude van Damme at the high-water mark of his career, when some studio execs thought he might be going somewhere.
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