TIMECOP (1994)

TIMECOP is the reason I don't watch trailers. I vividly remember sitting in a theater with my dad and seeing the trailer for TIMECOP. The main moment that grabbed me was this tiny bit where there was a dude with futuristic guns taking out some Confederate soldiers on horseback. My elementary school-aged mind was blown. I have loved visions of the future for as long as I can remember and mixing science-fiction with recognizable reality like that? I couldn't have been more stoked. Then I actually saw TIMECOP. Granted, the aforementioned scene was the first scene in the movie—and I'm not saying it was all downhill from there or anything—but the trailer had set up an expectation in my head that the rest of the movie did not live up to. That's stuck with me as much as the moment seeing the trailer has.

I don't want it to sound like I'm in any way insulting TIMECOP. Far from it. Of Jean-Claude Van Damme's ouvre, it's probably my third favorite overall. I do truly enjoy the film. All I'm trying to say is that as someone who had, at that point ,already been reading comics for half their life and consuming science-fiction for even longer than that, seeing that trailer set up an expectation in my mind that the movie did not live up to. I in no way believe that is the movie's fault. Nor the filmmakers'. Nor Van Damme's. Nor even really the people responsible for the trailer for that matter. Their job was to sell the movie and they absolutely sold me. It was just kind of like seeing a toy commercial at that age and then later getting the actual toy portrayed and figuring out that the product wasn't really what it seemed.

Having said all that, I enjoy the film. Very much. Even while I was disappointed, there was a lot about TIMECOP that I've always liked. Van Damme is great, obviously. This might not be the most physical performance from him but he's charming as hell in his role and what you do get from him in terms of physicality is sincerely wonderful. Hell, for a guy known for doing the splits, the one he does in this film might be his most iconic. It also bears noting that his actual emotional performance is up there with his best work ever. Few are going to argue that he was ever the best actor, but he does manage to pull off his character arc pretty beautifully. His portrait of a guy who was happy-go-lucky, then utterly broken, and then finally beginning to find hope and beauty in the world again is something that JCVD achieves in a way that I'm not sure people of the time expected or people since gave proper credit. He seemed to have totally gotten a handle on being a star, was starting to get a handle on being an actor, and this is some of his best work. When I was a kid, Van Damme was only slightly less important and iconic than someone like Schwarzenegger but looking back, I'd put TIMECOP up there with the best his contemporaries were making in the '90s.

Also, with TIMECOP, Peter Hyams once again proves himself to be one of the most underrated directors of his era. As if his work wasn't visually interesting enough already, he brings his vision of a comic book future to life in a way that's more grounded than most were even willing to try with anything in any way related to comic book movies of the time. His direction of a mix of martial arts stuff and standard issue gun stuff makes the fight scenes in the film legitimately thrilling, well shot, and plays brilliantly to what Van Damme was known for while also doing something different with what at, that point, was a fairly well-worn formula for JCVD movies. In the moment, I was really disappointed in the look he was going for with the future world but over time, I've found it to be much smarter for directors to visually realize their futuristic work as being basically the world we live in with some minor enhancements rather than doing something more fantastic yet unrecognizable, no matter how eye-popping it may be.

I hope I've made it clear by this point how much it is that I enjoy TIMECOP. At the start of this, I said it is the reason I don't watch trailers and to expound on that, I want to make clear that I believe that's a good thing. The goal of engaging with any piece of art should be as neutral as possible going in. Any bias is going to color the experience you're having. Avoiding media regarding something you're interested in steadily becomes a more and more difficult feat to achieve but is a worthwhile pursuit. It might sound pretentious, and it may be a puritanical kind of belief but the only way you are capable of properly judging anything, especially a piece of art, is with as little forethought or foreknowledge beforehand. I know this a lot to say in regard to a movie like TIMECOP, but I believe all art deserves an equal chance and if you're interested in action cinema, TIMECOP is one of the best you could hope for as far as this era of genre film goes.