Per Chris Snellgrove
| Published
For science fiction fans, there is perhaps no more common trope than time travel. From Star Trek to Back to the futurewe’re used to our favorite heroes and villains wandering through time to either save or threaten everything that ever was or will be. This of course led to fan debates about which film made the best use of this trope, but those arguments are unnecessary because the answer has been staring us in the face for over 30 years. Simply put, Time policeman is the coolest time travel movie ever made, and now you can stream it for free on Tuba.
Timecop rules
Time policeman (which was adapted from the Mike Richardson and Mark Verheiden story of the same name published by Dark Horse Comics) focuses on a government agency tasked with preventing crimes involving time travel. Ex-cop, agent Max Walker becomes caught up in a tangled temporal story involving a senator who abuses time travel to finance his presidential ambitions. After that senator takes down Biff Tannen and successfully changes the future in his favor, it will take all of Walker’s skills and knowledge to save more than just the world…he must save history itself.
Great performances are the cornerstone Time policeman…Ron Silver (best known for his Emmy-nominated role in West wing) plays a sleazy senator in order to manipulate the timeline. Meanwhile, Mia Sara (best known for her role as the title character’s lover in Ferris Bueller’s day off) plays Max Walker’s wife. Finally, Walker is played by a martial arts maestro Jean-Claude Van Dammewhose unique brand of action schlock chutzpah transformations Time policeman into something almost transcendentally strange.
Fortunately, the general public did not find it Time policeman too weird after the premiere. The film grossed $101.6 million against a budget of $27 million. While not exactly a blockbuster hit, the film earned enough to spawn a short-lived ABC television adaptation in 1997. We eventually got a direct-to-video sequel in 2003, though neither the sequel nor the television series brought Van Damme back.
Original Time policeman it may have impressed at the box office, but it didn’t really impress the critics. On Rotten Tomatoesthis film has a 42 percent rating from critics. Generally speaking, critics have acknowledged that the film will be liked science fiction fans who managed to suspend their disbelief and not ask too many questions about time travel. However, critics generally agreed that the film was a far cry from the classics of time travel cinema such as James Cameron Terminator.
Watch Timecop
So the moment of truth: why the hell am I recommending you watch it Time policemana critically maligned sci-fi film whose pop culture footprint can be measured in crappy sequels? First of all, despite the conceit of critics who have historically scorned science fiction, this film’s time travel plot is both clever and compelling. His vision of how humans would inevitably abuse temporal mechanics for wealth and power is both understandable and creative, and the film as a whole truly fully lives up to its crazy premise.
Still, this movie is worth watching mostly because of Jean-Claude Van Damme, who previously starred in action classics like Blood sport, Kickboxerand The universal soldier. He’s not the most emotive or expressive actor, but he makes up for it with a raw physicality that transforms what could be de rigueur movie fighting into beautiful displays of true martial art. Van Damme has always been a standout in his own right thanks to his martial arts skills, and in the high-tech world of Timecop, his brand of killer kung-fu stands out even more thanks to his wonderfully precise yet low-tech execution.
Will you enjoy it Time policeman as much as I do, or will you want to travel back in time and warn your slightly younger self to never watch it? You won’t know until you experience the intersection of action schlock and ambitious science fiction for yourself. And if you do end up traveling back in time, remember that touching your past self will kill you both, so be careful very be careful when you bang that remote.
Time policeman is available for free streaming is Tubi.