Timecop

Directed by Peter Hyams, Timecop follows Jean-Claude Van Damme’s Max Walker, a time-travelling police officer, as he attempts to prevent a shady politician (Ron Silver’s Senator McComb) from destroying the timeline. It’s a fairly irresistible premise that’s employed to consistently watchable effect by Hyams, as the filmmaker, working from Mark Verheiden’s screenplay, delivers a briskly-paced thriller that’s rife with appealing elements – with, especially, Van Damme’s typically engaging turn heightened by a proliferation of agreeably over-the-top action sequences. (The most obvious example of this is a high-water-mark moment that finds the erstwhile Muscles from Brussels doing the splits to avoid a potentially lethal electrocution.) The movie’s sci-fi-friendly storyline is augmented with precisely the sort of fun silliness one might’ve anticipated (eg Walker travels back to the Great Depression to stop someone from taking advantage of the stock market), and it’s clear, too, that the picture benefits from a narrative that consistently escalates the stakes for Van Damme’s sympathetic protagonist (ie McComb makes disastrous changes to Walker’s present reality). And although the film does stumble in its final stretch – the climax, which transpires almost entirely in and around a dimly-lit house, is almost incongruously uninvolving and padded out – Timecop is, for the most part, a solid actioner that ranks near the top (if not at the top) of Van Damme’s very best endeavors. (This is all in addition to Silver’s gleefully broad turn as the seriously smug villain, with the actor’s strong work here ultimately playing a key role in cementing the production’s success.)

*** out of ****