Movie review: Timecop

Originally published October 28, 1994, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1093

There are many theories about time travel and the effect that such theoretical activity might have on the world around us.

Let’s say you’re a time traveler, and you go into the past and change things. What effect will that change have? Well, maybe:

1) None. The “universe” would simply split off from that particular instant where the changed was made, creating a parallel universe, à la Larry Niven’s “All the Myriad Ways.”

2) The present is altered. The world you return to is not the world you know in some way, shape or form, à la Timecop (which is actually the main subject for this week’s symposium, but we’ll get back to that.)

3) A combination of both. You, the time traveler, create a parallel universe that you have jumped into. Yet you might co-exist with yourself. Not only that, but you can even inadvertently wipe out your own existence—which, if that happened, would seem to preclude the notion of you having gone back and changed the past, because how could you do that if you were never born in the first place? A la Back to the Future, obviously. Which leads us to—

4) Time is immutable. Little things, minor details here and there might change, but The Big Picture remains the same, usually through the heroic efforts of the time traveler who—it would seem—was fated to do whatever it is that he does.

5) Time is immutable, and nothing can ever change. Efforts to alter the past, no matter how determined, end up with things remaining exactly the way that they were. This from the old Mort Weisinger Superman comics, which added the wrinkle that you cannot co-exist with yourself—so whenever Superman would go back to, say, his days as Superboy, he would turn into a ghost and be unable to effect the world around him. This was a neat dodge, because it would immediately have posed the question: If Superman teamed up with Superboy, wouldn’t he then remember the entire event, since it happened in his own past?

Me, I’ve got my own theory. I think that time is constantly in flux. That there are fault lines in the time stream, and they’re constantly shifting in thousands of little subtle ways, just like tremors rearranging California real estate. Or think of time as telephone lines stretching from the present back to infinity (kind of like Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure) and you get line noise that screws the connection up. It’s part of your day-to-day existence; you accept it and move on.

Proof? That’s easy.

Ever walk into a room to get something and suddenly you can’t remember what it was you wanted?

Ever put something down, go back and look for it, and it’s not there?

Ever run into someone who greets you like you’re old friends, and you are absolutely clueless as to their identity?

We chalk it off to lapsed memory, but it’s not. It’s Time Burps. You can’t remember what you wanted in the room because time just burped and suddenly the reason why you went in there ceased to exist. The item you put down has vanished because time burped and you never put it there in the first place. Your newfound old friend, in his or her past, was a close buddy, but in your own past, you never met.

Time Burps.

Time Burps are no problem, of course. As noted, they’re part of life. But from Time Burps, it’s a short step to Time Heartburn, Time Upset Stomach and, finally, what Timecop actually deals with: Time Projectile Vomiting. The past comes back at you at high speed in barely recognizable form, and you jump back and say, “Ugh! Somebody clean up this mess!”

That’s where Max Walker, played by Jean-Claude Van Damme, comes in.

(I should note that I’ve never seen a Van Damme film before. Feeling the need to compete, I am now endeavoring to do splits while balanced on my kitchen countertops. Thus far I’ve only succeeded in pulling a groin muscle and accidentally kicking over our toaster oven.)

When the means for time travel is discovered in the 1990s, the possibility of abuse immediately rears its head. Hence the formation of an elite crew of Timecops, to which Walker is quickly recruited after the violent death of his wife (Mia Sara). Walker travels down the time line, making sure (usually through violent combat) that miscreants don’t alter the fabric of reality. It’s Jack Deth with a budget; Quantum Leap with teeth. Timecop (it should be noted) is based on the Dark Horse Comics series, giving Dark Horse two successful characters in major motion pictures in the past year, as opposed to DC’s two (three if you count Swamp Thing) in the past 50 years, and Marvel’s zilch in the past 30. Maybe Ron Perelman should try to buy Dark Horse next.

Walker is faced with two major dilemmas which form the core of Timecop—working to foil the evil machinations of Ron Silver, portraying an evil politician (as opposed to?), while resisting the temptation to violate his oath and save his late wife from her fiery fate.

The latter gives the film its emotional grounding, because Walker is suffering the tortures of the dámņëd. If a loved one dies, one grieves for a time but eventually, hopefully, moves on. But Walker can never move on, because every day of his life is another day in which he “allows” his wife to remain dead. He’s bound by his morality, tormented by his heart.

Van Damme pulls this off as best he can. He doesn’t have acting chops on par with his karate chops and ultimately plays Walker as an action kinda guy. The fight sequences are exciting, and they are frequent. Silver’s Senator McCoom has a seemingly endless supply of goons to hurl at Walker. His designs on the presidency are overly complex; if every thug in his employ voted for him, that alone would put him in the White House.

Silver provides the real acting treat. I’ve never seen him in such a villainous role before, and he’s clearly having a field day. By turns calculating, smug, and arrogant, his is the most varied and stimulating performance in the film.

Director Peter Hyams keeps things moving at a brisk clip. Unfortunately it’s not brisk enough to cover the story and script flaws.

For starters, the dialogue doesn’t rise much above serviceable—and many of Walker’s lines are positively godawful, bad beyond Van Damme’s somewhat stilted delivery.

Back in the days of James Bond movies, the hero tossing off a quip after a rather harrowing escape was a sign of coolness and unflappability—or even a release for laughter after a horrifying experience. (I remember one in particular where Bond is dancing with a woman who’s trying to set him up to be a target for a sniper. Bond spots the shooter at the last moment, swings the woman around, and she takes the bullet. With the newly-made corpse sagging in his arms, Bond sits her down at a table with an unsuspecting couple, says “Would you mind if my friend sits here? She’s just dead.” He then high-tails it, shuddering slightly, as if he can’t believe he just said that.)

Smart-alecky quips became standardized with Schwarzenegger, reaching saturation point in such films as Commando. But now we’ve reached the point where it’s expected—and if something is expected, then it becomes trite and clichéd, even forced. It’s not dialogue; it’s sound bites. It reduces all action heroes to one standardized stereotype; the accent changes, but the dialogue remains consistent and uninspired.

I doubt Van Damme could handle Shakespeare, but c’mon. We’ve gotta start doing better than this.

[Spoiler Warning: Two movies’ plot elements are discussed in the following two paragraphs.]

The low point comes when, up on a catwalk, Van Damme cracks open a pipe and sprays a thug with a white powder-like substance. He then says what sounds like “Have a nice day” and pushes the shrieking thug off the catwalk. The thug hits the ground and shatters. You then have to backtrack mentally to realize that the white “powder” was a cryogenic spray, that the thug had been frozen solid, and that what Walker actually said was, “Have an ice day.”

(An example of how to do it right is Kevin Costner’s Elliot Ness in The Untouchables. Ness pushes a thug off the roof of a building, sending him screaming, plunging to his death as he crashes through the roof of a parked automobile. It’s the most cold-blooded, horrific action Ness takes in the film. And when Stone (Andy Garcia) asks about the thug’s whereabouts, Ness utters his one “quip” of the movie. He says flatly, as if detaching himself from the inhumanity of his actions, “He’s in the car.” At which point we immediately cut to a shot of the thug’s blood-splattered remains. A “joke” used for shock value. Well done.)

[End Spoiler Warning.]

Nor can anything save the story from its utter predictability. This is an odd criticism considering that, in a time travel story, anything goes. Yet every major story element is foreseeable.

For example, the following rule of time travel is established early on: Let’s say you go back ten years and encounter a ten-years-younger version of yourself. You cannot—please pardon the expression—touch yourself. Because (we are told) identical matter cannot occupy the same space. If it does, the unfortunate subject will die horribly.

You’ve got your ending telegraphed right there. It’s like someone putting a gun in a drawer at the beginning of a play. You know, sooner or later, the gun’s gonna be pulled out and someone is going to get shot.

You shouldn’t know, 15 minutes into the film, how the ending is going to work.

Not to mention that this “identical matter cannot occupy the same space” thing is patently ridiculous. First off, if you encounter yourself 10 years in the past—it’s not identical matter. When you say, “He’s not the same man he was 10 years ago,” that’s a literal statement. The body is constantly generating new cells while jettisoning old ones. The DNA is the same, sure, but the matter isn’t. The only identical matter in the human body throughout the years is the eggs in a woman’s womb, so it might hold up with women, but it won’t work with men. Not only that, but how can any two people—even two versions of the same person—ever occupy “the same space”? Push your body against another person, skin to skin, as hard as you want. (Go on. I’ll wait for you to return. [Muzak plays.] Ah. You’re back. Was it good for you, too?) The skin molecules can rub against each other, but they don’t ever occupy the same space. What this really boils down to is an attempt to justify, on some sort of bogus scientific level, the old Superman “can’t co-exist” shtick. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work if you give it any thought.

Not to mention that every single major event in the story—the death of Walker’s wife, McCoom’s grab for power, the announcement of time travel, the formation of the Timecops—it all happens on the same dámņëd day in history. What are the odds? Billions to one? What is the likelihood? Zero.

Will the audience accept it? Yeah, probably.

That’s the problem with most action films, really. Sloppy thought or no thought given to the story dynamics or underpinnings. Which means that the only way an audience can enjoy such a film is to make the deliberate decision to turn off its collective brain and just be carried along for the ride. Such films are anti-thinking, anti-originality, anti-anything being demanded of the audience beyond blind acceptance. Unlikelihood piled on top of implausibility, all teetering on a foundation of sand.

In the meantime the movie makes millions and millions of dollars, becomes a long term box office hit, and establishes or perpetuates a blueprint for more of the same.

And with the dumbing down of America, it’s probably too late to change it.

Unless we go back in time.

Ðámņ. Where’s a timecop when you really need one? Well, I guess the only option remaining to us is—

Hmm.

Forgot what I was going to say.

(Peter David, writer of stuff (who can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705), ever anxious to give credit where credit is due, refers to his “Xerox Hour” column. Therein he mentioned a fan on a computer board suggesting Marvel try a real experiment by releasing lower-priced versions of comics two weeks ahead of the fancy ones. Since then it has been brought to his attention that the suggestion came from George Haberberger, participant on GEnie. At least, in this universe it did.)