Timecop
Short description
In 2004, time travel exists but is restricted to journeys into the past, and the United States government has set up an agency to police it. Criminals use the technology to alter earlier events for profit and power, and the Time Enforcement Commission exists to stop them. Its agent Max Walker is sent after a corrupt senator with ambitions of reaching the White House, who has gone into the past to reshape his own history. The pursuit becomes personal for Walker, since he lost his wife ten years earlier, and the mission puts him in the way of changing that loss himself.
Peter Hyams directed the film, the tenth of the seventeen features he has directed in chronological order, following Stay Tuned and preceding Sudden Death. Mark Verheiden wrote the screenplay, and Sam Raimi, Robert Tapert and Moshe Diamant produced. Jean-Claude Van Damme plays Max Walker, with Mia Sara as Melissa Walker, Ron Silver as Senator Aaron McComb, Bruce McGill as Commander Eugene Matuzak, Gloria Reuben as Fielding and Scott Bellis as Ricky. The film runs 98 minutes across the action, crime, science fiction and thriller genres.
Made for 28 million dollars, it took about 129 million dollars worldwide, a strong return on its budget. On IMDb it holds 6 out of 10 from roughly 69,000 votes, and on TMDB 6 out of 10 from about 1,400 votes. A critics' rating of 5.1 out of 10 from 44 reviews sits below those audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- The film is based on a series of comics by Mike Richardson and Mark Verheiden published by "Dark Horse".
- A 30-minute CD from "Varese Records" with music to the film by composer Mark Isham was released even before the premiere – on August 30, 1994.
- Filming took place in Vancouver and Burnaby (Canada, British Columbia), as well as in Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) and Santa Ana (California).
- The director's cut of the film lasts 98 minutes, while the theatrical release is 93 minutes long.
- The erotic scene in virtual reality appeared in the film by accident. It was originally intended to be a scene from a documentary about beavers. This happened because the film's creative team overindulged in alcohol and ended up at a strip club the evening before filming the documentary footage. Waking up the next morning, they realized they were late for the bus to the nature reserve, so they simply decided to film one of the dancers they had seen on stage the previous night.
- According to Steven Lambert (who played Lansing), during the filming of the final action scene, Jean-Claude Van Damme decided at the very last moment to make some changes to it, but director Peter Hyams rejected the idea. The actor became angry and, in the very first take of the fight with Lambert's character, did not stop his hand during a punch to the face, resulting in a real hit and Lambert bleeding. He decided not to stop filming, believing that the scene would look more realistic with blood, and he had a conversation about it with Van Damme after filming. Van Damme preferred to avoid the conversation and let the matter drop.
- The original version of the film contained two erotic scenes: a bed scene between Walker and Melissa, and a video scene on “safe sex,” of which only a fragment remained in the final version. However, these scenes are present on VHS.
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