Telling you to ‘check your brain at the door’ before watching a Jean Claude Van Damme movie may seem like an obvious piece of advice, but it’s something you’ll definitely want to do before venturing into 1994’s Timecop.
Van Damme stars as Max Walker, a U.S. Federal officer whose primary task is to regulate time travel (a reality in the film’s futuristic setting) and ensure that the technology isn’t used for criminal purposes.
Walker meets his match, however, in Sen. McComb (Ron Silver), an ambitious politician running for President. To secure victory for himself, McComb and his band of thugs travel to various points in the past, using modern weapons to rob, plunder, and - yes - sometimes even kill.
Can Walker stop McComb, who may be responsible for the death of Walker’s beloved wife Melissa (Mia Sara) years earlier, or will the greedy politician win out in the end?
Timecop raises more questions about the nature of time travel than it could ever answer (like why do some of Walker’s trips to the past cause changes in the future, while others don’t?), but hey, it’s a Van Damme action flick, with generous doses of sci-fi and even a little mystery thrown in for good measure (not to mention the occasionally over-the-top performance by Silver, whose slimeball Senator is, more often than not, the most interesting character in the movie). So don’t try to make sense of it all… that will only spoil the fun!
Rating 6 out of 10 (worth a watch).