By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 1 hour ago
Sometimes a movie’s influence doesn’t cross the generational line. That’s bad news for everyone involved with the film, but great news for later generations who have a treasure trove of yesteryear’s once beloved blockbusters they’ve never heard of to rediscover. If you’re in the mood for one of the best sci-fi hits of the ‘90s, you can travel back to a simpler decade by streaming the Jean-Claude Timecop for free on Tubi.
The plot of Timecop is that the titular police officers are sworn to protect the timeline from those who would travel back into the past for their own gain. One such person is an ambitious senator being investigated by the Time Enforcement Commission’s top cop. When that cop’s wife is put into the crosshairs, he must risk everything to save her life and restore the timeline.
When Timecop came out, what made it most notable was that it featured Jean-Claude Van Damme, the action star best known for such hits as Bloodsport and Kickboxer. He does a great job in this sci-fi blockbuster, lending the genre a visceral physicality normally lacking. That’s one of Timecop’s greatest strengths: it works just as well as a mindbending sci-fi film as a fast and frenetic action movie.
His wife is played by Mia Sara, best known for her portrayal of the title character’s girlfriend in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Meanwhile, the shady senator is played by Ron Silver, best known for his Emmy-nominated role in The West Wing. Rounding out the cast is Bruce McGill, an accomplished actor who I will forever remember for playing D-Day in Animal House.
Timecop wasn’t exactly a critical darling when it came out, and it currently has a 42 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics complained it wasn’t as good as other time-traveling sci-fi fare such as The Terminator. That’s maybe a fair criticism, but take it from a lifelong science fiction nerd: if you refuse to watch anything that’s not as good or better than James Cameron’s robot masterpiece, you’ll miss out on a lot of very solid genre films.
Moviegoers of the time agreed with this assessment, and Timecop earned $102 million at the box office against a budget of only $28 million. This was successful enough for the movie to earn a direct-to-video sequel, Timecop 2: The Berlin Decision, with an entirely different cast. The original Timecop also received a brief-lived TV series of the same name starring T.W. King in the title role.
When Timecop came out in 1994, it seemed to represent a kind of third way for the science fiction genre. Star Trek: The Next Generation had recently aired its series finale, and Star Wars was still half a decade away from the release of The Phantom Menace. Into this heady air, Timecop proved that other franchises could pack all of the weird, Star Wars-style action audiences loved into a movie that didn’t compromise on its timey-wimey, Star Trek-style plot.
Will you agree that Timecop is a lost treasure of the ‘90s, or will you end up wishing someone had traveled to the past and kept this movie from being made? You won’t find out until you stream it for free on Tubi. Love it or hate it, traveling to the past via this film is infinitely better than just spending another evening in the present day, doomscrolling until you fall asleep.
