Once again I've taken a trip down memory lane and revisited a movie I haven't seen in years. Sometimes you find that a movie you revisit is as good as you remember. Fewer times you'll find that the movie was better than you remember. Most of the time you'll find that the movie is worst than you remember. Timecop is of the third category.
I love time travel and time loop movies. It is such a fascinating concept and can be done in a myriad of ways. But time travel and time loop movies are delicate and need to be handled with care. As it is these movies will be flawed because there is always a conundrum with time travel. One example of a time travel conundrum would be:
If I stub my toe and go back in time one minute to prevent myself from stubbing my toe, thereby removing the impetus for my time travel, did I ever go back in time? Did I ever stub my toe?
So, because of inherent conundrums like this there will always be flaws in time travel movies. But having said that, some movies are more flawed than others and Timecop is on the more flawed side.
The premise of Timecop is simple: time travel exists but an agency is needed to prevent tampering with the past because of the well known ripple effect that can and will occur. This agency called the TEC (Time Enforcement Commission) has the technology to monitor history looking for irregular activity (how they monitor the entirety of history I don't know). If they detect any big irregularities they send an agent back to prevent the temporal tampering.
There were a lot of problems I had with the movie with Jean-Claude Van Damme's acting being at the top of the list. When I was younger I could watch one JCVD flick after another completely ignoring his terrible acting just to see him kick the crap out of somebody. Well, now in my older years I want more than splits, kicks and fighting with dozens of jump cuts to make it look more spectacular. But putting JCVD aside the movie still had flaws that bothered me; the biggest being the breadcrumbs left everywhere. What do I mean by that? If you're going back to the past to alter it for whatever reason, knowing the potential impacts it could have on the future you'd have to have as little futuristic items on your person as possible. You wouldn't want someone in 1960 getting their hands on your iPhone; or worse, your world history book. Timecop was a little too sloppy with that.
Then there is the other time travel conundrum that's never done right:
If I go back to the past to alter something, the moment I alter it my memories should be altered likewise.
For whatever reason, whenever a time traveler goes to the past, then alters something, then returns to the present, his memories are unchanged. He discovers all of the new events as if he just arrived on the planet that day.
My point in it all is that "Timecop" had the regular time travel flaws and then some. But even with those flaws I still rate it a 6/10 because this is a 20+ year old movie now!! This is from my younger and more innocent years, I can't just completely dump on it. Back then JCVD was the man even if he preferred his feet when a gun was more effective. Furthermore, this was an early time travel movie when all people had as a reference was "Back to the Future," "Terminator" and "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure." The inconsistencies in this movie were trivial in 1994. Timecop is not the best time travel movie--or any kind of movie--but it's still cool
I love time travel and time loop movies. It is such a fascinating concept and can be done in a myriad of ways. But time travel and time loop movies are delicate and need to be handled with care. As it is these movies will be flawed because there is always a conundrum with time travel. One example of a time travel conundrum would be:
If I stub my toe and go back in time one minute to prevent myself from stubbing my toe, thereby removing the impetus for my time travel, did I ever go back in time? Did I ever stub my toe?
So, because of inherent conundrums like this there will always be flaws in time travel movies. But having said that, some movies are more flawed than others and Timecop is on the more flawed side.
The premise of Timecop is simple: time travel exists but an agency is needed to prevent tampering with the past because of the well known ripple effect that can and will occur. This agency called the TEC (Time Enforcement Commission) has the technology to monitor history looking for irregular activity (how they monitor the entirety of history I don't know). If they detect any big irregularities they send an agent back to prevent the temporal tampering.
There were a lot of problems I had with the movie with Jean-Claude Van Damme's acting being at the top of the list. When I was younger I could watch one JCVD flick after another completely ignoring his terrible acting just to see him kick the crap out of somebody. Well, now in my older years I want more than splits, kicks and fighting with dozens of jump cuts to make it look more spectacular. But putting JCVD aside the movie still had flaws that bothered me; the biggest being the breadcrumbs left everywhere. What do I mean by that? If you're going back to the past to alter it for whatever reason, knowing the potential impacts it could have on the future you'd have to have as little futuristic items on your person as possible. You wouldn't want someone in 1960 getting their hands on your iPhone; or worse, your world history book. Timecop was a little too sloppy with that.
Then there is the other time travel conundrum that's never done right:
If I go back to the past to alter something, the moment I alter it my memories should be altered likewise.
For whatever reason, whenever a time traveler goes to the past, then alters something, then returns to the present, his memories are unchanged. He discovers all of the new events as if he just arrived on the planet that day.
My point in it all is that "Timecop" had the regular time travel flaws and then some. But even with those flaws I still rate it a 6/10 because this is a 20+ year old movie now!! This is from my younger and more innocent years, I can't just completely dump on it. Back then JCVD was the man even if he preferred his feet when a gun was more effective. Furthermore, this was an early time travel movie when all people had as a reference was "Back to the Future," "Terminator" and "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure." The inconsistencies in this movie were trivial in 1994. Timecop is not the best time travel movie--or any kind of movie--but it's still cool