Back in the mid 90’s there was a brief moment where it looked like Belgian martial arts superstar and amphetamine enthusiast Jean-Claude Van Damme might graduate from B movies to more B plus-type fare. After a financially successful run in the action movie ghetto, Van Damme started to attract the sort of material typically reserved for dudes whose names rhyme with Schwarzenegger. It was reasonable to assume that, out of the Michael Dudikoff’s and Jeff Speakman’s of the world, JCVD could be the one to karate leap his way into the mainstream. I mean, he wasn’t about to be confused with a Stella Adler grad when it came to acting, but he was easy on the eyes and seemed like a nice enough dude. He certainly wasn’t a self-righteous, ponytail swinging creep like Steven Seagal. Unfortunately the Muscles from Brussels had other goals in mind. Namely, doing as much cocaine as possible...all day every day. He once told an interviewer that, at the height of his addiction (which coincided with the height of his film career), he was blasting ten grams of the devil’s dandruff A DAY!! It’s tough to imagine how he had time for anything other than being really, really fucking high...and maybe walking around in circles grinding his teeth. By the late 90’s JCVD couldn’t open an envelope, let alone a major motion picture. It’s all good though ‘cuz my man eventually sobered up and made a both a self-referential movie and also a TV show about a fallen Belgian action movie star who eventually sobered up. All’s well that ends well, eh?
We’re here today to talk about a flick that Van Damme made during his “golden era.” It’s called Timecop and it came out in 1994. While it’s based on a comic book, it’s one of those concepts that probably only required a one word pitch session. Screenwriter: TIMECOP! Producer: (tears off shirt...douses room with champagne). What happens is this: we open way, way back in Civil War times, where a group of soldiers on horseback are halted by a man ominously standing in the middle of their thoroughfare. The soldiers are transporting gold. The man says that he would like the soldiers to give him their gold. The soldiers say that they would not like to do that, no. The man responds by brandishing a high-powered machine gun and rat-tat-tat-tating all of the soldiers to death (note: the horses were fine). Right away you’re thinking...they didn’t have this type of weaponry in the Civil War! Something is clearly rotten in Denver! Flash forward to Washington DC on the afternoon of October 10, 1994. If that date sounds familiar to you it’s because it’s the day four days prior to the day when Pulp Fiction came out! A small group of senators and government so-and-so’s have gathered to hear a presentation from the head of the Space Program. Space Guy says that space travel is boring so they’ve gone ahead and invented time travel. Everyone in the meeting is all “grah hah hah beam me up Scotty.” Space Guy ain’t laughing. Shit is for real. He goes on to explain a couple of important rules/plot points of this blend of time travel. Apparently you can go backwards (“It feels like I only go backwards”--Tame Impala) ...but you cannot go forwards...which is the EXACT same problem I’ve been having with my 2010 Chevy Cobalt. Seriously...$200 for anyone who’s looking for a car that only drives in reverse. Perfect for your high schooler. Email me. He also says that while one can travel to the past they should not attempt to change things as it could be catastrophic. Dude, has no one in the room seen ANY of the Back to the Future trilogy and pondered what would’ve happened to Marty McFly had he balled his own mom in 1955?? We all know not to mess with that shit. Space Guy says he needs a budget to create TEC, the Time Enforcement Commission, which will be headed by the actor Bruce McGill, a man who has been in so many movies that I could change this website to Bruce McGill of the Week and not run out of material until 2045. Also in attendance at the meeting is the man who played Alan Dershowitz 30 years ago but who is no longer alive (unlike Alan Dershowitz) Ron Silver. Silver plays Senator McCone and we have to assume he’s about to get up to no good because, I don’t know, he has a beard and is quiet for much of the meeting. They say it’s the quiet ones...
The action moves to the local mall, where we drop in on Mia Sara, who OWNED in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and then proceeded to do little else of note ever again (like acting in Timecop). That’s right...mother effin’ Sloan Peterson!! I remember my grandparents bought me this teen celebrity magazine back in 1987 and they asked people like Charlie Sheen and Corey Feldman and Robert Downey Jr which actress that would most like to work with and they all said Mia Sara. I bet you would, you goddamn gross bastards. She retired from acting a while back and is now married to Jim Henson’s kid Brian...which means their house must be totally tricked out with rare Muppets swag! Like a banana phone in every room and a Fozzie the Bear toilet that says “waka waka” every time you drop trow. ANYWAY...Mia Sara is looking for Magic Eye posters when her husband comes creeping up on her. It’s JCVD...and he looks like hammered horse shit! It’s like he aged thirteen years in the three years since Lionheart. His voice is also super raspy ‘cuz that cocaine drip will fuck up your throat something awful. He tells her that he’s been asked to head up the Time Police (they live inside of my head!) She asks if it’s dangerous. He tells her that he doesn’t bake cookies for a living. Fair play, mate. While they’re grabbing their Orange Juliussss’s JCVD notices that he’s being mean mugged by some straight out of central casting bad guys in trench coats. Instead of sussing out the situation, the happy couple head home to their baller Victorian over in Georgetown and start fuhhh...king!!! Like, Yankee candles burning...Dave Sanborn on the soundtrack...multiple positions. Pretty early in the flick for such an aggressive sex scene, y’all. I haven’t even opened my Junior Mints yet!
Their post coital loungearound is cruelly interrupted when JCVD is called into work. Mia Sara says she suddenly has something very important to tell him. I’m thinking she either secretly purchased the Magic Eye poster with the schooner that he’d been fawning over...or she’s pregnant. I’m gonna prolly go with the latter. He says she can simply tell him later...provided those suspicious men from the mall don’t break into the house and murder her in the next 30 seconds. Unfortunately that’s exactly what happens. They pump JCVD full of lead (it’s cool, dudes, he’s wearing a bulletproof vest) and blow his house the fuck up with Mia Sara still inside. She dies. Now we jump back to Wall Street on the day of the stock market crash of 1929. People are leaping to their deaths right and left but there’s this one guy Atwood who isn’t about to kiss the concrete ‘cuz he has a copy of USA Today from October of 2004 in his briefcase. Not sure what that has to do with the stock market. Maybe he’s a huge Red Sox fan and wants to read about their historic playoff run of October ’04?? We get it, though--he’s from the future and he’s got future stats just like Biff and his sports almanac in BTTF 2. Atwood is like “buy me a million shares of whatever whatever stock that’s about to go through the roof” but before that can happen the walls of his office turn into the liquid metal terminator and an unsmiling JCVD pops out. We know he is not the same JCVD from ’94 because he has grown a mullet and looks even more hungover than he did before. Turns out Atwood is JCVD’s former partner and he’s come to take him back to the future. Atwood explains that he’s in the past doin’ dirty work for Senator Ron Silver and that they’ll wipe him out if he goes back to 2004. JCVD is unmoved. He half-heartedly kicks a couple dudes asses and makes a reference to the Tyson/Spinks fight that lands with a thud.
Having lived through both 1994 and 2004 I know that 2004 was just like 1994 but with way less OJ Simpson. The filmmakers, possibly due to budget constraints, don’t really do much to Jetsons up 2004. Instead of flying cars everyone drives a 1980 Chevy Caprice covered in scrap metal. Cars and homes DO include computers that respond to vocal commands...so there you have it: Alexa was invented by the movie Timecop. When JCVD and Atwood arrive in 2004 Atwood goes on instant trial. JCVD is all “tell them what you told me about the corrupt senator” but the dude refuses and is sentenced to death...a punishment that is meted out faster than you can say “Innocence Project.” JCVD just happens to arrive back at the office at the same time Ron Silver is being given a tour of the TEC facility. So the guy responsible for bankrolling time travel waited 10 years before touring the time travel facilities? I call bullshit. The evil senator wants to defund the TEC...and that’s fine with me because it’s SUPER vague as to why they even exist in the first place. Presumably they have to go back and prevent people from jacking up the timeline...but it’s unclear who gets to travel through time. And how. And why. So many questions! We DO learn that it’s SUPER bad news if you go back in time and encounter your earlier self. It’s like crossing the streams: bad. I guess Ron Silver is stealing money from the past so he can graduate from evil senator to evil president. While riding in a limo casually munching on pretzels, Silver tells one of his aides that “elections are won on TV. You don’t need the truth!” Eee...sounds like another guy I know who was doing jack shit in 2004 but who is doing a great deal (of awful things) nowadays. When the aide disagrees Silver breaks his nose. Rude.
JCVD drags his sorry ass home to his sorry ass apartment where he slugs booze straight from the bottle and watches old home movies of his dead wife. His whiskey-fueled reverie is cruelly interrupted when like 10 bad guys show up and try to murder him. The henchman crew even includes our friend the indestructible Asian hand-to-hand combat expert. Dude, you usually don’t show up until the last 5 minutes of the movie! What gives?? JCVD is discovered wearing a pair of nut-hugging boxer shorts...but that doesn’t mean he can’t deliver a furious flurry of his trademark roundhouse kicks. So that’s what he does. He kicks all of the bad guys to death, does a split, and then goes back to sleep. The next day at the office JCVD is assigned a new partner in the form of Mr Robot star Gloria Reuben. Bruce McGill says he’s gonna send them back to 1994 so they can investigate the corrupt senator and his corruption. We finally learn how they travel through time, too: they are strapped into this rocket vehicle and blasted directly into a brick wall. When they arrive back in time they simply fall out of the sky. No idea what happens to the rocket or how they return! Maybe there’s a DeLorean dealership nearby or some shit.
So JCVD and his new partner are in 1994 and MAN how I would love to travel back to 1994. I would tell my 15 year-old self that I should NOT try to smuggle reefer into that Aerosmith concert. They are totally gonna find it and call your mom, kid! And maybe cool it with the jorts too. They go looking for Ron Silver and find 1994 Ron Silver AND 2004 Ron Silver!! 2014 Ron Silver was unavailable as he is deceased. I honestly have no earthen idea what is going on in the movie at this point. Future Ron is trying to tell old Ron to be more corrupt and invest in Monster.com or something. There’s some “two Ron Silver’s onscreen at the same time” action...just like there were two JCVD’s in the 1991 film Double Impact. I bet dude was psyched he didn’t have to pull double duty on this one though. More time to hang out in his trailer and run/blow lines! JCVD’s new partner turns out to be dirty, though, and soon all guns are on our man Van Damme. He has this look on his face like “fuuuuck I gotta do STUNTS now??” So he does. There’s a massive movie warehouse fight and the dirty partner takes a couple of bullets and JCVD zaps himself back to 2004 with a little clicker device. I guess I just answered my own question from the previous paragraph right there, didn’t I?
JCVD arrives back in ’04 to find that the TEC is all dumpy and Ron Silver is super wealthy and about to be elected president. It’s the inverse of what happens to the McFly family at the end of the original BTTF. JCVD explains that he needs to go BACK to 1994 to see if the dirty cop survived so that she can testify against Ron Silver. Dude, didn’t anyone tell you to make sure you have everything you need before you leave someplace?? And then...and then...I don’t know what. The movie is getting awfully plotty at this point. We all know what homebody REALLY wants to do is to go back and save his wife from being murdered. I mean...unless he’s a real dick or something. So don’t bore us and get to the chorus, amirite? They figure out that Ron Silver is time traveling in a secret prototype. My stars. JCVD gets back in time and finds his crooked partner in the hospital and she apologizes...which is good...and then the bad guys murder her...which is less good. Now it just happens to be 10/10/94...so he knows his wife is probably about to chow some Sbarro at the food court. He finds her at the mall and tells her he’s himself from the year 2004. She tells him he looks like shit. He tells her that his last seven consecutive movies went straight to video. She understands. He tells her that she’s pregnant (she already knows this) and not to tell 1994 JCVD until he is called into work after they boink. He then plants a big sloppy kiss on her. What, is he gonna go watch his younger self screw too?? So sick.
So the bad guys come knocking again but this time they have to deal with both 1994 AND 2004 JCVD. There’s an interminable rainy rooftop fight scene and ’94 JCVD is shot in the bulletproof vest just like he was back in ’94. Mia Sara is shot in the arm...which is action movie code for “ an injury that has a 100% survival rate.” Just once I would like to see someone take a bullet in the arm in an action flick and fucking DIE! You’d never see it coming! Speaking of things we see coming: 2004 Ron Silver shows hoping to kill everyone and repair the timeline. He tells JCVD that he’s a fucking idiot and that “you can only use that fancy kicking on Broadway.” I’d probably go see Jean-Claude Van Damme on Broadway...just sayin’. But then 1994 Ron Silver shows up and JCVD remembers the whole “don’t cross the streams” bit. He pushes the Ron Silverssses together and they explode into a ghastly Blob monster before melting down into a puddle of Pepto Bismol. It’s wicked gnarly.
This time when JCVD materializes back at TEC he finds the place tricked out like the McFly house at the end of the original BTTF (yes...that again). He asks Bruce McGill what happened to Ron Silver and he’s all “never heard of him!” He heads to his sweet Victorian and finds it unexploded. Mia Sara is alive and fully recovered from her 1994 gunshot wound. And bonus: JCVD has a son now!! And double bonus: he didn’t even have to raise him! No dirty diapers and Baby Shark for this dude! He gets to skip the icky stuff and hang out with his 10 year-old boy! I wonder if they’ll do what my dad and I did when I was 10: veg out on the couch and watch Jean-Claude Van Damme movies. That would be SO meta. The end.