Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 7-March-10
Spoiler Rating: Medium

Time Cop (1994)

On the one hand, Time Cop is a good way to launch my Spotlight series on time travel because it opens with a discussion on the risks of such a feat, e.g., how changing history might have serious unforeseen consequences or might offer foreseeable consequences too tempting to resist. On the other hand, Time Cop is a poor way to launch the series because it is a middling action movie by the standards of any time. Starring The Muscles from Brussels, aka Jean-Claude Van Damme, the movie fleshes out a run-of-the-mill plot with fight scenes that barely raise the excitement quotient. Still, I am willing to bet this will be the only movie in the series that features a male doing a full-on split, and that at least is impressive.

Van Damme's character is a happily married man who, in 1994, accepts a job with a federal task force created to police the new technology of time travel. On the same day he is attacked by strangers in his home and his wife (Mia Sara) is killed. Jump forward 10 years and he is a hard-working sad sack dedicated to busting those who would use time travel for personal gain while nobly refraining from doing so himself. (From the vantage point of the 21st century, the 2004 cars envisioned in 1994 look quite amusing.) The government has been largely successful at keeping the reality of time travel a secret, so it is not surprising to discover that illegal tampering with yesteryear is being coordinated by a U.S. Senator (Ron Silver). This fellow, generously described as "capable of eating his young," is an obvious graduate of the School for Sneering Villains. He wants to rule the world from the White House and is willing to steal the past's money and opportunity to get there.

The senator's plotting allows the hero to go back and rework his own tragedy in the service of saving the country. It also allows him to kick the crap out of guys with some of the worst hair ever immortalized on film. The final showdown hinges on an important general consideration about time travel, namely whether it's safe to have two incarnations of the same person in the same place, one barging in from the future, one rightfully lodged in the present. This leads to another important consideration: memory. Even as Van Damme recovers the joy he thought was lost, it appears that he does not recollect ten years of tender family moments in which he played a part. Isn't that a tragedy in itself? This is one of the thornier aspects of hopping around time. If you revised your life, would you remember the different variations of it or only the latest one you lived through? Which would be preferable? Since memory and experience shape character, could you retain a single identity while running through different versions of yourself? Thoughts like this can make time-travel stories enjoyable in a frustrating way. Unfortunately they do not elevate Time Cop above the humdrum. I wonder: should the filmmakers go back to 1994 and try again …?

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