Weirdhouse Cinema: Timecop

Watch out, causality! In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe strap themselves into a rocket-propelled time travel sled and discuss the brain-melting plot of 1994’s “Timecop,” starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, Ron Silver and Mia Sara. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
And this is Joe McCormick in Today's film on Weird
House Cinema is the nineteen ninety four sci fi action
thrill ride Time Cop, starring Jean Claude, Van dam, Ron
Silver and Mia Sarah. I had seen this movie before,
but not in a long time, and boy was this something.
If you want to be transported mind and body back

(00:38):
to the year nineteen ninety four, watch Time Cop. Time
Cop is a time capsule, not only because it has
scenes of characters going to mals in nineteen ninety four,
which is a kind of site that I'm sure many
people our age can't help but be profoundly stirred by.
But it's also a type of movie that I think

(01:00):
used to exist, and I don't know if it still does,
if there are still movies like this, I don't know
what the examples are, but it is essentially an R
rated action movie for kids. Action movies nowadays are all
they're all PG thirteen, you know, because they want to
get all the I guess younger teenagers in the theaters.
But this movie is definitely R rated, does not shy

(01:24):
away from the F words and the blood squirting everywhere,
but it is not at all a dark, gritty, morally
ambiguous tale of depravity and revenge, the kind of thing
you might expect from an R rated action movie. Instead,
it's like a live action cartoon. It is a goofy, goobery,
brightly colored slapstick fest with non stop kicks to the groin.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, it's true. Warning up front. If you have like
a groin strain or anything, and you don't want to
watch people get injured in the groin, then you might
want to wait on this movie un til you're heeled up.

Speaker 3 (02:03):
I was trying to think of other movies in this category,
like the you know, the cartoonish action movie with a
high silliness factor and a well earned R rating. I
haven't seen it in a long time, but I think
Demolition Man was another one like this and came out
around the exact same time. But the other thing I
want to say is that, at least from my perspective,

(02:23):
time Copy is awesome. I was shocked how much I
liked this. This movie is dumb as hell, but I
thought it held up really well for what it is.
The ninety eight minute runtime just races by the movie
will lower your IQ by several points, but I thought
it was truly entertaining, a spectacular amusement.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
I agree on all of that. Yeah, it's a very
tight film. It didn't give you any opportunity to really
be bored by the proceedings. Great action, as we'll discuss,
and when it comes to the IQ points, Absolutely don't
think too hard about the time traveling this movie. Don't
look at the light Marion, because if you do, you're

(03:05):
going to break something. So be prepared. I'm not saying
it's still a fun exercise, but just know you are
going to run up against the wall if you try
and figure this out, if you try and chart this.
In fact, I found at least one blog post online
where somebody tried to create some charts to understand the
various time travel shenanigans in this movie, and they just

(03:28):
threw their hands up as well.

Speaker 3 (03:29):
This is not primer, This is not where like you
charged it out and it actually does all make sense.
This is just like, I have no idea how these
people got here this time. It just doesn't work.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
Yeah, people started traveling through time and it's a mess
which I mean is kind of that kind of the theme.
So embrace the messiness of this film. Now when it
comes to time travel, this is our fourth proper time
travel movie on Weird House Cinema. It comes up occasionally.
It's like a side gimmick. I think I had to
remind myself of this. But in The Eliminators the Mad
Scientists and that also does time travel. But it's not

(04:02):
a time travel movie. Our time travel movies have been
free jack transfers to and time after time prior to.

Speaker 3 (04:08):
This, all movies with their own unique pleasures. But I
think this is our first martial arts focus time travel movie.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
That's right, Yeah, this one is a definite martial arts picture.
I would describe the martial arts action in this film
as not being it's not about epic stories. Like I
think I've said before, a proper action sequence, be it
with swords or fisticuffs, it needs to tell a story,
and especially in a martial arts movie, your fights need
to tell stories. In some movies, those fights are like

(04:39):
novels within the film. In this book, in this book,
in this movie, time time cop, the fights are more
like short stories but they're really solid short stories.

Speaker 3 (04:49):
Well, I don't know if you agree with this. I
was divided on the action scenes. Basically, I thought all
of the all of the action scenes involving gun, most
of those were kind of in I don't know, I
could take them or leave them. They were kind of
standard nineties action slop, you know, close up of one
person shooting, close up of another person shooting a bunch

(05:10):
of like barrels exploding in the meantime. But the hand
to hand fights and like knife fights and all that
that was top notch, really really good stuff.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
Oh yeah, absolutely, it's the melee that is where the
amusement in the entertainment is here. I mean, that's why
you have Van Dam. Mean, it's okay if Van Dam
fires a gun in an action movie, but it's not
really what you want to see. Yeah, unless he's doing
the splits at the same time, and then I guess
that counts.

Speaker 3 (05:35):
Oh he does a world class jump splits in this movie.
But the other thing I would say is that the
hand to hand fight scenes are excellent, but they're excellent
in a cartoony way. They don't come off as particularly
like realistic, plausible fights. There's like there's one I've got
in mind where there is a knife fight where the

(05:55):
characters are just it's like a sword duel. So what
you expect to see in a sword dou in a
movie as characters slamming their swords into the other person's sword.
That makes more sense with the sword because you might
be using it to try to hit and parry. But
there's a scene in this movie where they're doing that
with like six inch long knives. They're just like slamming

(06:16):
their knife blades together.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
Yeah, and a plus, this is definitely a movie where
I guess our lead character gets extra points if he
does a quality kill if there's like a fatality move involved.
So it's you know, it's very based in all of that. Now,
to come back to the time travel aspects of this,
I want to I want to go back to a
continuing conversation we've had Joe in previous time travel episodes.

(06:39):
I guess, particularly time after time, you talked about time
travel story types. I thought you might refresh everyone's memory
on this and figure out exactly where time coop falls
into all of that.

Speaker 3 (06:51):
Okay, well, so these were story categories I created. This
is not like a you know, a accepted literary framework,
so don't go trying to cite this in your film
or literature classes. But these were the basic types of
time travel stories I could think of in our Time
after Time episode. So the first one was what I
called Journey to Time Island. This is a time travel

(07:12):
story that uses the future or the past primarily just
as a setting. It's a hostile setting for an adventure narrative,
so it might as well be Skull Island or an
alien planet in a Star Trek episode. It's just an
unfamiliar setting where characters must face unfamiliar challenges. Second type
of story is what I called phish out of Time.

(07:34):
This is usually what you find in time travel comedies.
It is the time based equivalent of the fish out
of water plot, where most of the tension, its comedic tension,
comes from people not getting it, not understanding local conditions,
not being able to adapt to the expectations, and the

(07:55):
social taboos and stuff of the time to which they
have been transported. Time after Time had some of that
with you know, HG. Wells walking around in nineteen seventies
cities and being scared of the traffic and then going
to the Scottish breakfast restaurant where he enjoys Palm Fritz.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
Yeah yeah, McDonald's.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
Okay. The third category was what I called fresh eyes
for bad Eras. This is primarily a story that tries
to comment on the particular features of the time in
which they are set, usually the present, but sometimes the future,
and sort of have social commentary about it. So the
time traveler is able to bring fresh eyes to look

(08:36):
on the present and see how wrong it is. Usually
notice bad things about it that you know, all of
the Krono locals have just learned to ignore. I think
there are two main subtypes of the fresh eyes for
bad Eras plot. One is like, the modern world sucks,
and this is observed either by somebody from the future
or from the past. And the other is, if we

(08:56):
keep this up, look what the future is going to
be like, it's going to be bad.

Speaker 4 (09:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
This is a great one, of course, because it's always
that chance to visit the like the dystopian or post
apocalyptic future and realize, oh, this is a bad course around.
We've got a course correct, because look at all these
flaming barrels in the street.

Speaker 3 (09:14):
That's right, okay. Fourth category of story is what I
called debugging history. This is one that focuses kind of
on the butterfly effect or on the consequences of actions
across time. It's where people are trying to isolate a
variable in the progression of history and human life and
maybe alter it in order to fix something that goes wrong.

(09:36):
It's primarily concerned with consequences of decisions and long term
ripple effects. A great example of this is Back to
the Future.

Speaker 4 (09:45):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (09:46):
And then the last category is what I would call
the time travel arms race story. This is the type
of story that is actually the most focused on time
travel itself, and the kind that focuses on time travel
as a mechanism. It takes it seriously as a mechanism
and usually as a weapon, something that grants you god

(10:07):
like power. These plots often have competing time travelers, like
maybe both the heroes and the villains have access to
time travel, and they're often like trying to go back
further and further to get ahead of the other one
or change something or fix something. And it recognizes time
travel as a dangerous, chaotic, uncontrollable power. Essentially. In fact,

(10:31):
I would say this type of story is the one
that best fits Time Cop. I think Time Cop is
a time travel arms race movie.

Speaker 2 (10:39):
Yeah, I think that's a I think that's that's a
good comparison to make, because yeah, time travel technology is
just straight up compared to atomic power in this movie.
And the way it is explored is it's explored is
this thing that is ultimately a great threat that has
to be controlled. There are discussions on should it be
policed or should it just be banned out right or

(11:00):
prevented in some manner. So absolutely like this is a
time travel arms race all the way.

Speaker 3 (11:06):
There is a part of the mood, Well, we can
discuss the implications of this, but I did think it
was funny. Whereas this character who's a politician, is like,
we shouldn't be trying to police the use of time travel.
We should just ban it.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
But I mean, I get, I get. I think what
he was saying there is like, why are we paying
for time cops that are going out like after the
fact and trying to fix things and chase people down
when maybe we need to be carrying out real world
strike some time travel facilities, which I think they also
allude to trying to do that's going on. Maybe they
just need that we need to double down on that.

Speaker 3 (11:38):
I don't know, Yeah, I guess so. So, Yeah, I
think Time Cop is an arms race plot. It's not
really especially concerned with social commentary or satire. There's a
little bit of that, but what's there doesn't really depend
on the time travel mechanic. It is mainly concerned with
the implications of time travel as a technology and inevitably

(11:59):
as a And you know what, I think I would
sort of agree with the spirit of the movie, which
is that if time travel to the past were invented,
it would immediately be misused, two disastrous effects. I think
that's likely true, and I think, as the movie says,
it's quite plausible that the invention of time travel would
be far worse than the invention of nuclear weapons. Just

(12:21):
a genuine nightmare.

Speaker 2 (12:22):
Yeah, all of history just swirling the drain pretty much,
all right. So the elevator pitch on this one, I mean,
it's basically in the title. You don't even really need
to go further than Time Cop. But basically the pitch
is time crimes are happening throughout all of human history,
and it's up to a single government agency and one
incorruptible time cop to police them.

Speaker 3 (12:42):
Couldn't have said it better myself. That's right.

Speaker 4 (12:45):
Now.

Speaker 2 (12:45):
It's probably worth noting as well that this is our,
I think, our first true cop movie. And by that,
I don't mean a movie that has cops in it
or concerns police work or cops saving the day. I
mean a movie that has this like blank cop, like
Maniac Cop, RoboCop, Scanner Cop, and so forth.

Speaker 3 (13:01):
Yeah, hyphen cop movies, yes, though most of them don't
actually have a hyphen.

Speaker 4 (13:06):
You know.

Speaker 3 (13:06):
I would not say I am especially fond of cop
movies in general, but I love sci fi or supernatural
hyphen cop movies almost as much as I love sci
fi or supernatural wrestling movies. And I'm going to pitch
some ideas right now for aspiring filmmakers. Lych Cop. I

(13:26):
may have suggested that one on the show before, but
if not, there you go. You can have it. Take it.
I give it to you.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
Natural regression from Maniac Cop, I think.

Speaker 3 (13:34):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, how about Predator Cop. Yeah, it's got
like the blades and the and the and the like
the razor frisbee.

Speaker 2 (13:42):
Okay, yeah, that I could see that happening.

Speaker 3 (13:46):
Mars Cop. That's pretty surely somebody you know that if
they haven't made that, go and do it. How about
Druid Cop.

Speaker 4 (13:54):
M Druid Cop.

Speaker 2 (13:55):
Druid Cop could work.

Speaker 3 (13:56):
Yeah, there's some mistletoe badge element you could play with there.
I don't know. Shark Cop Shark Cop.

Speaker 2 (14:03):
Shark Cop does seem to exist on the Z grade
level at least I did a little searching around. Nothing
that anybody needs to seek out. But great minds think
alike when it comes to Shark Cop.

Speaker 3 (14:13):
And why not in the end lawnmore Man Cop.

Speaker 2 (14:16):
I mean, we live in a world where we have
more than one scanner cop movie. So yeah, lawnmower Man
Cop just makes sense.

Speaker 3 (14:22):
Okay, I think we're about to do the trailer, right,
should we do the trailer?

Speaker 2 (14:25):
Yes, let's listen to this trailer. It's a good one.

Speaker 3 (14:28):
Well, hold on before we play it. I want you
folks out there to listen for this. So this is
a classic ninety style in a world trailer and it
says one man, not once, but twice.

Speaker 4 (14:40):
All right, here we go.

Speaker 5 (14:47):
We're all alone, no chaperone, head get on of the.

Speaker 6 (14:52):
World and plumba.

Speaker 5 (14:54):
That's miss became. There's something wild about your child's.

Speaker 6 (15:01):
Let me be outrage.

Speaker 3 (15:18):
Join Partner, Thanks partner, Let me go Max, I'm not
hurting anybody. Good to take you back in the year
two thousand and four, time travel is a reality.

Speaker 4 (15:27):
Charge for the violations of TEC Code only penty.

Speaker 5 (15:30):
Time travel intend to.

Speaker 3 (15:32):
Alter the future and the crime. And it turns out
going back in time as a pretty easy way to
make money.

Speaker 2 (15:37):
I think you got yourself and shipping of gold, and
you're taking a general way.

Speaker 3 (15:42):
The genie is already out of the bottle.

Speaker 4 (15:44):
The technology is there now.

Speaker 3 (15:46):
One man, you hear the name Aaron McCole is about
to take the ultimate power trips. He's gonna be president.
You're gonna need the press. You don't need endorsements.

Speaker 4 (15:53):
You don't need to either the truth if you need
money or to enforce the laws of time.

Speaker 3 (15:57):
Are we still together in ten years? Am I dead?
When that is determined to stop? Here I can go
back to save her. This comeback.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
It's not going back to still money.

Speaker 3 (16:07):
Stay here, Walker, my future, your dad. I think it
planned to fore ahead. Jean Claude, Down Down, Run Silver Da.

Speaker 4 (16:23):
Mia, Sarah, Yeah, I love it.

Speaker 2 (16:42):
This is a kind of a funky trailer where it
starts off with that old timey nineteen twenty nine opening
before we get that noodling guitar riff to let you
know it's not the past anymore, baby, and then we
get the whole time travel scenario laid out for us
with dramatic narration by If I'm not mistaken, this is
Don la Fontaine, the voice of God himself. It's sometimes

(17:03):
a little hard to track down credentials on these trailers,
but I'm like ninety nine percent sure this is Don Lafontaine.
And eventually they also go ahead and cap it off
with Another thing I love in particularly nineties trailers is
they just use James Horner's Alien score at the end,
that building bump bump bum bum bum bum bump bump

(17:23):
bump music. And you know, even though that's obviously not
the score for this film, they were like, Nope, that
Alien's score that really gets into people's bloodstream. We've got
to use that as much as possible to sell our films.

Speaker 3 (17:35):
You have ten seconds to clear minimum safe distance. Yeah,
and it worked.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
This movie did like financially clear minimum safe distance. And
then so this is a successful film, made money, made
people happy.

Speaker 3 (17:51):
I didn't go deep into the critical reaction to Timecop.
But it seems critics were sort of divided on it,
and a lot of the people who did like it
kind of gave it middling positive reviews. They said, like,
it's an okay ripoff of Terminator. Sometimes I read stuff
like that and I'm like, these same critics were giving
positive reviews to Steven Segall and Hard to Kill. What

(18:12):
was wrong with people? Like they just did not know
how to have fun correctly?

Speaker 2 (18:17):
Yeah, this is a movie that it's it's kind of
like it's you know, it's like Ketchup in French Fries.

Speaker 4 (18:22):
I guess, you know.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
It's like you can say, oh, we need to deconstruct this,
you know, what could we do to improve this set
or the other. But at the end of the day,
it's it's ketchup in French fries and and that's going
to that's going to please most of the people who
ordered it, knowing what they were ordering. So yeah, I
don't get some of the criticism that it got, Like
Ebert gave it two stars, But again, Ibert Ebert's always

(18:44):
kind of an interesting litmus test for films like this
because Time Cop is exactly the sort of film that
I could see Roger Ebert giving at.

Speaker 3 (18:52):
Least three stars too.

Speaker 2 (18:54):
Yeah, maybe even a little more, you never know, But
in this case he was just very much in the
middle of the board on it.

Speaker 3 (19:02):
Well, it reminds me of Ebert's statement about how when
you're a child and you have the choice to watch
either Gamera, Guardian of the Universe or Air Force One,
the child knows that Gamera is better. But then when
you get older and more mature and you think yourself wise,
you think no air Force One, that is more realistic,
that is better. Then when you get older, once again

(19:23):
even wiser than that, maybe you gain true wisdom instead
of the fake, pretentious wisdom of young adulthood, you realize
no Gamera is better.

Speaker 4 (19:31):
Yeah, all right.

Speaker 2 (19:33):
If you want to watch Time Cop before we get
into the discussion here, well, lucky you. It's widely available digitally.
It's also on DVD and Blu Ray, though I don't
think it's been given any special treatment on Blu Ray
over the years. I could be wrong, but I didn't
find anything. All right, let's jump into the discussion of

(19:59):
the people who may this film. The director and cinematographer
is Peter Hyams born nineteen forty three. He was born
into a kind of show business family Broadway in theater,
and he eventually started off his career in TV journalism
in New York City, in Chicago and then Chicago. In
nineteen sixty six, he reported from Vietnam, I Believe for
New York City CBS affiliate, and it was during this

(20:23):
basic time period that he got into documentary filmmaking. He
sold his first screenplay, t R. Baskin to Paramount Pictures
in nineteen seventy and it was produced in seventy one
that had Candice Bergen in the leading role. He started
directing as well on TV movies at first, but then
in seventy four he directed the comedy Busting, starring Elliott
Gould and Robert Blake as cops. Then came a pair

(20:46):
of dramas out Time and Pepper, both in nineteen seventy four,
but then in seventy seven he directed the fake Mars
landing thriller I Guess you could say It's a conspiracy
thriller capricorn I, and a number of big films Fought,
including eighty one's Outland, a gritty space western starring Sean Connery,
Peter Boyle and also a very early performance from Clark.

Speaker 4 (21:09):
Peter.

Speaker 2 (21:09):
So, I think we talked about Outline before. Have you
seen Outland, Joe?

Speaker 4 (21:12):
I don't.

Speaker 3 (21:14):
This is one of those movies. I really don't know
if I've seen it or not. If I have seen it,
it did not make an impression, but I know about it.
It's supposed to be like a remake of High Noon
in Space, right, Yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
Remember digging it many years ago.

Speaker 4 (21:28):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
It might be too grimy for me now, but it's
like a grimy space western with Sean Connery as the
new sheriff in town. Peter Boyle is the corrupt mine owner,
and then a lot of people's heads blow up.

Speaker 3 (21:40):
Okay, well, maybe if I watch it I can figure
out if I have already watched it.

Speaker 2 (21:45):
Another big one from Hyam's was two thousand and was
the two of the film from nineteen eighty four. Actually,
I'm already getting my ears confused here due to the
time travel anomalies. But twenty ten, the Year We Made Contact,
released in nineteen eighty four.

Speaker 4 (21:59):
He directed that as well.

Speaker 3 (22:00):
The sequel to two thousand and one, A Space Odyssey,
which twenty ten generally got pretty positive reviews, but it
seems like, I don't know, just kind of a misguided
idea trying to make a sequel to two thousand and one.

Speaker 4 (22:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:15):
Yeah, it's not a film I've seen in its entirety before.
I had some friends were fans of it and like it.
Though you obviously go into it with certain understandings, like
you know, it's not going to be two thousand and one.
It's not the timeless classic the two thousand and one is.
But I've heard it's interesting as a mid eighties sci

(22:36):
fi movie. Now, the late eighties saw Hims direct some
mainstream thrillers, but then in the nineties we got ninety
two's Stay Tuned. One of the many Changing Channels movies.
This is the one that starred John Ritter. It would
be interesting to come back and watch one of the
many Changing Channels films in the future, because there were
a number of of them. I want to say Charles

(22:57):
Band was involved in at least one of these. It
just kind of a weird bug that got into everyone's
mind based on the whole wide realm of cable television
and satellite TV channels. And then of course came time
cop He followed this up with another Jean Claude van
Dam film, Sudden Death co starring Powers Booth. Then came

(23:18):
nineteen ninety seven's monster film The Relic, followed by a
ninety nine's End of Days that's an Arnold schwarzenegtive versus
Satan movie. Then there's a two thousand and one Musketeer film,
the two thousand and five film Adaptation of A Sound
of Thunder, which, if I remember correctly, is one of
our listener's favorite films, or at least one that he

(23:39):
regularly communally watches with some friends.

Speaker 4 (23:42):
Is that the case?

Speaker 2 (23:43):
Do you remember this, listener mail?

Speaker 3 (23:45):
Maybe? Well, this might have come up after I mentioned
the movie adaptation of A Sound of Thunder, which I
noted as being quite bad. Well, it's an adaptation of
a Ray Bradbury story about the like the Butterfly fact,
so it's a you know, time travel thing, but I
think it ends up with these like lizard baboons attacking

(24:05):
people in the future, and it's got Ben Kingsley obviously
thinking about what time the bank closes while he's shooting
his scenes.

Speaker 2 (24:15):
I guess I haven't seen that one, but there was
a Ray Bradberry theater adaptation up.

Speaker 4 (24:19):
It was pretty good, all right.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
So for Peter Hyams, his last movie, his last directorial
credit was twenty thirteen's Enemies Closer, and that one also
starred Jean Claude van Dam as the villain, apparently at
Hyam's request, like they brought him in. He's like, hey,
I'll direct this, but I know who you need to
cast as the villain is John Claud Bend And.

Speaker 3 (24:39):
It worked well together.

Speaker 2 (24:41):
Yeah, I guess. So, you know, the three different films
they worked on. And his son, John Hyam is also
pretty much in the Jean Claude van Dam business, having
worked on two thousand and nine's Universal Soldier Regeneration and
twenty twelve Universal Soldier Day of Reckoning.

Speaker 3 (24:59):
I did not realize the Universal Soldier series had hit
the colon abstract noun phase.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
Yep, yep they did. And you know, I think I
remember reading some not bad things about these these later
Jean Claud van Dam Universal Soldier movies, you know, Regeneration
and Day of Reckoning. I can't remember which one is
supposed to be good, or if they're both good.

Speaker 4 (25:20):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (25:21):
Take that with a grain of salt.

Speaker 3 (25:22):
I got an idea. Jetson's Meat Flintstone's kind of crossover event.
It's Universal Soldier meets hell Raiser. What do you think.

Speaker 2 (25:32):
Yeah, it'd be good for the hell Raiser franchise. I
think it needs that kind of shot in the arm
cross it over, cross it over. There was a you know,
speaking of it, there's a tangent, but there was a
I don't know if it was any good or not.
I think I looked at one of them. But somebody
did a hell Raiser versus.

Speaker 4 (25:48):
Cabal.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
What is it Night Breed hell Raiser versus Nightbreed comic
book back in the day like that. That sounds interesting,
Go for that.

Speaker 3 (25:56):
But they're both Clive Barker things, aren't they.

Speaker 5 (25:59):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (26:00):
Yeah, okay, okay, yeah. I mean you could go outside
the Clive Barker. I mean, you could keep it in
Clive Barker. It could be hell Raiser versus raw Head Rex.
That could be interesting.

Speaker 4 (26:08):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
I mean, he has a rich world, rich literary world
that he created. Now, speaking of comic books, we should
note that Time Cop is based on a Dark Horse
Comics comic book series by the same name by Mark V.
Hayden and Mike Richardson, who also have story and screenplay
credits on the film. Richardson also created the comic book

(26:31):
The Mask and yes it is the Mask that is
the basis for the Jim Carrey movie. And Mark had
a story credit on the first movie you mean the
first Mask movie, the first Mask movie, The Mask Starr
starring Jim Carrey, that also came out in nineteen ninety four.
So this was a big deal for these two. The
dark Horse Comics world really got to come out firing

(26:56):
and all cylinders here, and both of these individuals remain
active in writing and producing now, specifically Mark v. Heiden
on this he has screenplay, story and comic series credit.
Born fifty six. After nineteen eighty four, he went on
to write an episode of Perversions of Science. This is
a would be sci fi tales from the Crypt with
a terrible VR sexy robot as the show's keeper. And

(27:20):
then there he did nine episodes of the Time Coop
TV series, and eventually such shows as Smallville, The Battlesarcalactica, Reboot, Heroes,
Falling Skies, The Kind of Flash in the Pan twenty
nineteen reboot of Swamp Thing. I don't know if that
might have been good, but it just came out at
a bad time and seemed to have some platform issues,
and he has production credits on all of those. His

(27:42):
next project is actually writing and eping a hell Raiser
series for HBO Max. I did not know this was coming, Okay, Yeah,
I have my doubts about it. I mean nothing against
this creator. I just have doubts that there's anything left
in the tank on hell Raiser that is.

Speaker 3 (27:59):
No prible a twenty six episode season arc cannot solve.

Speaker 2 (28:04):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll see. I mean, I wish them
the best. I hope it's good, all right. Mike Richardson,
on the other hand, screenplay story comics series also credit
on this also EP born nineteen fifty, the founder of
dark Horse Comics. Mike's writing credits have been limited or
more limited compared to his partner on this film, mostly
character credits on Mask franchise stuff, but he served as

(28:28):
executive producer on such films as twenty sixteen's The Legend
of Tarzan, twenty nineteen's hell Boy That's the more recent
hell Boy film, and both RIPD movies. In comics. However,
it's notable that he was also a writer on the
Star Wars Crimson Empire comics series that I've heard good
things about. And he also apparently wrote on Time Cop
the comic book. All Right, you know, you didn't come

(28:51):
here to hear about the people who wrote this, though.
You want to hear about Jean Claude van Dam, who
plays Walker the titular Time Cop nineteen sixty. Yep, it's
the Muscles from Brussels, Dutch born martial artist turned actor
who also studied ballet for several years in his teens.
And I've read that Jean Claud van Dam himself has
attributed ballet for the grace of his movement, so he

(29:14):
kind of combines the grace of ballet with the power
of karate.

Speaker 3 (29:18):
He is very graceful, and what he lacks in Arnold
Schwarzenegger type of bulk he has in agility. There's a
lot of like jumping and the kind of impossible kick
postures in this film.

Speaker 2 (29:32):
Yeah, and there's a lot of fluidity to the way
he moves that works well on screen as well. So
he and a friend moved to Hollywood in the early
eighties to seek acting glory. So his early credits are
mostly I mean most of it aren't even even credits
those uncredited background roles for the most part, but he
ended up befriending and sparring with Chuck Norris. He also

(29:53):
did some bodyguard work at Norris's bar called Woody's Wharf,
which is apparently still around under different ownership. You can
you can look it up as a website and everything.
But his first role, Jean Claude Vandam's first real role
of note is the villain in the bonkers movie No Retreat,
No Surrender, in which and I think I've seen this.
I think I watched the riff tracks version of this,

(30:15):
a riff of this. The plot is Kurt McKinney is
training with Bruce Lee's ghost so that he can ultimately
defeat even the Russian Krashyinsky played by Jean Claude Van Dam.

Speaker 3 (30:27):
I'm gonna feel like I'm losing my mind if I'm
wrong about this, but I think this is the movie
that I saw Rift live by some former cast members
of Mystery Science Theater three thousand.

Speaker 2 (30:40):
Okay, yeah, now I'm unsure. Maybe I know I saw
it Rift, but I'm a little foggy on if it
was on the screen or live or what. So one
way or another. We've seen this gem of the motion
picture for the most part. However, this was not people's
first in their introduction to Jean Claude van Dam. For this,
we really need to consider night He mediates. Blood Sport

(31:01):
one of the most iconic Western martial arts films of
that era. It introduced John Claude Van Dam's just I
guess his trademark move, which is doing the splits while
violently punching or shoving somebody in the crock. Probably a punch,
I guess, Maybe it's a chop. I can't see because
he's all up in there.

Speaker 3 (31:20):
This was parodied in Mortal Kombat because this is also
what Johnny Cage does in the Mortal Commer character. Johnny
Cage is a parody of Jean Claude van Dam.

Speaker 2 (31:30):
Yeah, and blood Sport. This is a film I haven't
seen in a long time, but I remember it being
a lot of goofy fun. It has Donald Gibb in it,
plays this lovable biker. Bolo Jung is in it playing
this just you know, super intimidating martial artists, and then
Forrest Whittaker is in it as well. I do not
remember Farrest Whittaker from this film.

Speaker 4 (31:51):
But he is in the credits.

Speaker 3 (31:52):
It's like he's playing a fed of some kind. Hmm, okay,
it makes sense, you know, it's interesting. I don't quite
think I realized that John Claude van Dam doing the
splits and punching someone in the crotch was his signature move.
But of course it makes sense with the Johnny Cage
connection and in time cop I don't think he ever
does that, but he does both elements of that independently

(32:13):
multiple times. So there are prominent splits and prominent groin
punches and kicks.

Speaker 2 (32:19):
It's weird to try and figure out, Like maybe it's
just I mean, the splitz make sense, like this is
a great physical stunt that he is capable of. If
there is even a faint reason to have him do
it in your film, you go ahead and incorporated into
the plot. It's what the people want to see. The
violence to the crotch. However, while part of that original
trademark move is not necessarily required, but I don't know,

(32:43):
maybe there's some sort of thematic link there, Like the
idea of doing the splits is maybe kind of painful
in your mind. If you cannot do the splits yourself,
and therefore it's just a short walk to somebody just
being like punched in the groin.

Speaker 3 (32:58):
There's a lot of it into Time Cup, though in
Time Cup there's at least I think one major kick
to the groin. There's a scene where he's like sort
of drumming on a guy's groin with sticks, and then
there are there in the Final Showdown, there are some
guns to the groin of the villains.

Speaker 4 (33:15):
Yes, so, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (33:16):
It seems like it was a recurring theme. It was
on their minds for some reason.

Speaker 2 (33:21):
And somehow us describing it makes it sound more violent
than it actually comes off in the film. I don't
know why that is, but I don't know. It's very
video game esque, I guess in the end. Yeah, anyway,
back to Jean Claude van Dam. In nineteen eighty nine,
he ventured into sci fi properly with Albert Pyune's Cyborg,
and then there's just a whole string of Van Dam flicks.

(33:42):
There's nineteen nineties Lionheart with Brian Thompson, nineteen nineties Death Warrant.
That one was pinned by David Goyer. There's nineteen ninety
one's double impact. This is double the Van Dam in
which he plays twins and also Bolo Jung is back
to beat up on them.

Speaker 3 (33:58):
You know, Van Dam was optioned to play the Twins
and dead Ringers.

Speaker 2 (34:03):
That would have been a very, very different film.

Speaker 3 (34:06):
It's we need it.

Speaker 2 (34:08):
I don't know that we've done it. Have we done
a Twins movie before?

Speaker 3 (34:12):
No, I don't think so. I don't want to do
dead Ringers.

Speaker 2 (34:15):
No, no, no, I don't want to do dead Ringers either.
But there's there's a lot to say about it because
on an acting level, it seems like actives of a
certain caliber will get to play twins at some point,
and it's you know, it's like the challenge of it.
But then also you get people like Van Dam and
I love Van Dam's performance, but he's not on the
acting level. He's not the pure acting talent where you're like,

(34:38):
I need him to play opposite himself as twins. You know,
it seems like it's better left for like the Jeremy
Irons of the world.

Speaker 3 (34:47):
I'm sure there is a good Twins movie we could do.
We'll have to come back to that.

Speaker 2 (34:51):
Okay, all right. Ninety two he does Universal Soldier This
is Roland Emericks Super Soldier movie in which he takes
on Dolph Lundren and and he also starred in ninety
three's Hard Target from John Wu opposite Lance Hendrickson, and
then ninety four he was in the feature film adaptation
of Street Fighter, a film of such just crazy good
casting and Bonker's energy that I think we will have

(35:13):
to come back.

Speaker 3 (35:14):
To it at some point, maybe on a Tuesday.

Speaker 4 (35:16):
We'll do that.

Speaker 2 (35:17):
Yeah, special Tuesday edition. So the Jean claud van damtrain
continues to keep on rolling after all of that. Highlights
include ninety seven's Double Team co starring Dennis Rodman, Mickey Rourke,
and Paul Freeman of all People. Other highlights include ninety
nine The Universal Soldier of the Return, two thousand and
one's The Order There's two thousand and eight's JCVD we

(35:41):
mentioned Regeneration Kung Fu Panda two also gets into voice acting.
The Expendables two. Also the TV series Jean Claude van
Johnson two kick Boxer sequels. I think at least they
have kick Kickboxer on the name, and then he's also
a voice talent in minions.

Speaker 3 (35:57):
The Rise of Grouse Grew Is Grew one of the minions.

Speaker 2 (36:03):
I think Grew is the minion Master.

Speaker 3 (36:07):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (36:07):
I haven't seen these movies. He's what they're minions of. Yes, okay,
all right, so that's our hero. But you can't have
a hero without a villain. And we know from other
films if your hero is also like a muscly action
guy with maybe less acting chops, it makes sense to
have a seasoned veteran actor to play off of to

(36:29):
be your antagonist. And that's what we have in this
film with Ron Silver.

Speaker 3 (36:34):
I love Ron Silver in Time Cop. He is just
the smoothest, sleaziest Oh he's great.

Speaker 2 (36:42):
Yes, yeah, it's it's a very fun performance. Ron Silver, Yeah,
plays Senator Aaron McComb. Silver lived nineteen forty six through
two thousand and nine. He's the corrupt US senator who
harnesses the power of time travel to advance his own
political ambitions. Just a really mean guy. Silver himself came
up on TV and transitioned into small parts in film.

(37:04):
He starred in the CD supernatural thriller The Entity in
nineteen eighty two. He had a supporting role in eighty
three Silkwood. He plays a vendor. Apparently in nineteen eighty
four is Romancing the Stone, which I don't remember. That
same year he appeared in Hurley Burley on Broadway, followed
by another Broadway play, Social Security, and then in nineteen

(37:26):
eighty eight he won a Tony Award for his performance
in the Broadway play Speed the Plow. From there, we
see him take on some of the biggest and notable
roles of his career, the lead in nineteen eighty nine's
Enemies a Love Story, the villain role in Catherine Bigelow's
nineteen ninety thriller Blue Steel, and the role of Alan
Dershowitz in nineteen nineties Reversal of Fortune opposite Jeremy Irons

(37:50):
and Glenn Close as the Von Bulohs.

Speaker 3 (37:53):
So that's a film adaptation of a creepy, real life,
famous court case that in a lot of ways I
think prefigures the sort of a true crime podcast obsession.

Speaker 2 (38:03):
Yeah, yeah, it's I've never seen it in full. I
remember when it came out as a young person. I
remember hearing about it through the media, so I have it.
It's still in my head. It's like Reversal of Fortune
is a big deal because it was like, there's a
whole thing about in Time magazine and my grandpa, so
it must be really important. But yeah, also very much

(38:25):
a true crime sort of story, and I have gone
back and watched clips of it, and Silver's great as Dershowitz.
There's a lot of nuance to his performance. It's really
fun to watch. But anyway, probably due in large part
to that villain performance in Blue Steel. He is cast
as the villain in Time Cop and his old discuss.
It's a lot of fun. He also appeared in nineteen

(38:46):
ninety six is The Arrival, written and directed by David Toohey. Toohey,
of course would go on to work with Vin Diesel
on the Riddick movies, and it's still working with him
on Riddick movies. Silver worked pretty steadily through the rest
of his career, with one of the highlights probably being
a recurring role in The West Wing. And it's also
of note that he directed and acted in a nineteen
ninety three TV movie called Life Pod, which is a

(39:08):
sci fi take on Hitchcock's Lifeboat huh oh. And this
is also interesting. Doesn't really reflect his performance here, but
Silver apparently had a master's degree in Chinese history and
apparently spoke fluent Mandarin.

Speaker 3 (39:21):
So I had no idea.

Speaker 4 (39:22):
I had no idea.

Speaker 2 (39:23):
Yeah, so his performance in this film maybe lacks the
nuance of reversal of fortune, but it's still like he's
all in and he's not phoned in this baby and
thinking about when the bank's closing, or at least if
he is, he's going for the bank as well. Because yeah,
it's a very energetic performance. And since this is a
time travel movie, he's playing his character both in the

(39:44):
future and in the present, or in the present and
in the past, depending on how you look at it.
I don't know, two different versions of the same character,
which is kind of fun.

Speaker 3 (39:53):
I think he's excellent in this movie. He just fantastic
as the slimy, rich guy politician villain. I don't know
if this is best to talk about here or later.
Maybe we should go ahead and do it here, because
there was something rob You flag this to me, and
I couldn't help but notice it as well. It's kind
of unsettling about his character. So I'll just say the
villain of this movie is a very rich guy who

(40:17):
prominently who famously has lost a lot of money due
to some stupid business decisions. He is a narcissistic bully
who constantly abuses his underlings. He runs for president on
a theory that he doesn't need endorsements from respected figures
or the truth on his side. He just needs to
be on television NonStop. One of his signature campaign themes

(40:41):
seems to be anti immigration sentiment. He notably eats a
lot of junk food. He promises that he's going to
make America like it was the eighties again. Part of
his pitch for the presidency is that he'll be so
rich he can't be bought off. And there's one part
where I can't remember what he did, think he's just
murdered somebody or something, And the character says, maybe he'll

(41:03):
calm down after the election, you know, maybe he'll grow
to meet the occasion once he understands the seriousness of
the office. So, yeah, interesting character in this nineteen ninety
four movie.

Speaker 2 (41:16):
Yeah, Yeah, it's kind of ahead of its time in
that respect. It's a yeah, great villain role, great villain performance. Yeah,
he's even hard on his past self. So there's in
a sense, there's negative self talk in this film because
he he even gives his past self a hard time
over the gentle food.

Speaker 3 (41:33):
In a scene in which I think he also like
shoots a business partner in the head.

Speaker 4 (41:38):
Yeah, all right.

Speaker 2 (41:47):
The other of the three top build actors on the
cast is MIAs Sarah playing Melissa. Mia Sarah is born
in sixty seven. While she had one small role on
an episode of All in the Family in eighty three,
her career was launched in a major way when she
played Lily in Ridley Scott's nineteen eighty five dark fantasy
film Legend opposite Tom Cruise.

Speaker 3 (42:09):
Legend is a film I think you and I have
discussed the sort of mixed merits and demerits of before.
It's a weird movie to go back and experience because
there's a lot about it that's really good and a
lot about it that is kind of boring actually, and
or I don't know, maybe you didn't agree with me
on that, but it's like the kind of movie you

(42:30):
can't really recommend because overall it's not that great. But
also I kind of find myself wanting to bring it
up a lot. At least Tim Curry in it, or
the music in it or whatever.

Speaker 2 (42:40):
Yeah, it has a lot going for and it's a
Ridley Scott film, so you know, at the very least
it's going to beautiful to look at. I haven't given
it a dedicated viewing since I was like in junior
high or something. I think when I've had it on
since then, it's been in the background or something. So
it's one i'd have to come back and revisit. But
it's one I want to revisit. I have a lot
of memories about it, but still I know that it

(43:04):
is kind of up and down now. One note on
legend that's important for this century is that it was
filmed in massive studios of course, next to another little
mid eighties fantasy production, Labyrinth. Yeah, and I wasn't aware
of this first of these two productions kind of overlapped.
But also the cast and crew apparently hung out a

(43:24):
little during the overlapping productions, which I mean mostly that
just makes me try to imagine David Bowie's Jare At
the Goblin King and Tim Curry's Darkness the Big Horned
Demon Dude, like hanging out together and you know, chilling
between the two productions, but having.

Speaker 3 (43:42):
The minno cheese together.

Speaker 4 (43:43):
Yeh, yeah, something like that.

Speaker 2 (43:45):
But it's also where Mia Sarah first met Brian Henson.
Of course, the son of Jim Henson, who worked on Labyrinth.
She would later meet him again and wound up marrying
him in twenty ten, so her future husband she met
on between the sets of Labyrinth and Legend. So anyway,
Mia Sarah kicked it off big with this Ridley Scott film.

(44:07):
Follow that up with the role of Sloan Peterson in
nineteen eighty six is Ferris Bueller's Day Off, So right
out of the gate, two big films, one of which
definitely has I think maybe more of a pop culture
footprint than the other. Now flash forward to nineteen ninety three.
She appears in two episodes of a TV series called
Time Tracks.

Speaker 3 (44:26):
Would you believe?

Speaker 2 (44:28):
This is prior to Time Cop, but it is about
a time traveling policeman who brings back time traveling fugitives
from the past.

Speaker 3 (44:38):
So I wonder if that came up in her audition.
It's like, I've been in this movie already.

Speaker 2 (44:43):
It's like I've got experience you can use, I've done
this sort of thing before, and they're like, well, it
just makes sense. So anyway, she does Time Cop after that.
Let's see, she was in the nineteen ninety seven twenty
thousand Leagues under the c mini series starring Michael Kine.
She also played Harley Quinn on the TV the series
Birds of Prey in the early two thousands, and she
retired from acting in twenty thirteen.

Speaker 3 (45:04):
So another actor in this movie. I was watching and
I kept trying to place he is the boss of
the time cops in the film. And I finally realized
it's the sheriff for my cousin Vinnie.

Speaker 2 (45:19):
Yes, this is Bruce McGill born nineteen fifty. This is
not a guy I recognized at all. I didn't even
draw any connections to other films. But when you look
him up, you realize, oh, man, this is a longtime
character actor whose work goes back to I think nineteen
seventy seven. He played Daniel Simpson Day or d Day
in Animal House in seventy eight, as well as in

(45:41):
the And I had no idea this existed Animal House
TV spinoff Delta House.

Speaker 5 (45:45):
Huh.

Speaker 3 (45:46):
I did not know that was the thing either.

Speaker 2 (45:48):
It existed in some format, but beyond that, just extensive
TV and film credits, often pretty high up in the
billing of respectable, you know, for respectable character work in films.
He was an all Overstone's The Hand in nineteen eighty one.
That's a crawling hand movie with Michael Caine in and
he was in Silkwood in eighty three. He was in
a Tales from the Crypt episode in ninety one called

(46:09):
The Trap. As you pointed out, he was in My
Cousin Vinnie in ninety two, eighteen episodes of the original
mcguiver series, Exit Wounds in two thousand and one, he
was in Lincoln in twenty twelve, and he's still active.

Speaker 4 (46:21):
Wait.

Speaker 3 (46:22):
I just had to look it up to make sure.
Exit Wounds is the movie with Steven Segal and DMX.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
Yes, yes, so hm. That was a fun production to
work on. I wonder, all right, we also have Gloria
Rubin in this, playing Fielding another time cop. Ruben was
born in sixty four. Largely a TV actor prior to this,
but afterwards she pops up in films such as ninety
five's Nick of Time, Lincoln in twenty twelve again the

(46:49):
remake of Firestarter from twenty twenty two. Her TV credits
include such shows as Homicide, Life on the Street, Falling Skies,
The Blacklist, and Mister Robot.

Speaker 3 (47:00):
I thought she was good and I was actually really
disappointed when her character betrays John Claude Van Dam and
reveals herself to be working for the villain. And I
was almost shouting no with the TV.

Speaker 2 (47:12):
Yeah yeah, but we find out, I mean, there are
reasons for her betrayal, and really, I mean, she's kind
of one of the more interesting side characters in the
film that I kind of wanted to see more from.
I kind of this is the kind of character that
you could have, you know, at least from a narrative
standpoint and plotting standpoint, you could have used to carry
a sequel or a TV series.

Speaker 3 (47:30):
I agree. It's also a shame when after her little
minor redemption arc she she gets murdered by the time goons.
I feel like I wish she could have sort of
buttied up with John Claude for the end.

Speaker 2 (47:42):
Yeah, that would have been good, all right, if you
just a couple of other really actors of note here.
Scott Lawrence plays the character George Spotta. Is it Spota
or Spoda? I can't remember what they said. I think
they call him Spoda Spoda all right, he's a yeah,
he's a government man. I forget what department he's with.

Speaker 3 (47:59):
I know if they even say he gives like classified
briefings to they Senate Oversight Committee.

Speaker 2 (48:05):
Yeah, that's really his only role in the film. As
he comes in all smooth, he lays out the time
travel exposition, and then he's gone. Maybe McCombe had him erased,
but maybe they don't even suggest that, but it's as
if he was erased because he never shows up again. Now,
the interesting thing about Laurence if you look him up,
you see a picture of him. He has a distinctive look,
so you've probably seen him in stuff before. I know

(48:27):
i'd seen him in some things. But if you have
played pretty much a Star Wars video game ever, certainly
since nineteen ninety four, then you have heard him because
he's been the go to voice actor for Darth Vader
in everything that has come out since Star Wars tie
Fighter in ninety four.

Speaker 3 (48:46):
Really did he do Darth Vader in Jedi Fallen Order?

Speaker 4 (48:49):
He did?

Speaker 3 (48:50):
Yep, Oh okay, I did not realize it was the
same guy.

Speaker 4 (48:54):
Yeah, I thought.

Speaker 2 (48:55):
I thought he was really good played through that game
and I loved it. So, yeah, solid Darth Vader from
this guy. Now as an actor, non voice actor, his
credits go all the way back to bit parts on
Murder She Road and New Heart, La Law, Murphy Brown
and so forth in the late eighties. But you'll probably
more likely to recognize him from two thousand and nine's Avatar.

(49:17):
I believe he plays a soldier in that. And he
was also a long running character on the TV show
Jag Jag.

Speaker 3 (49:24):
That's one of those shows you see a lot of
credits linking there, but I've never seen.

Speaker 2 (49:27):
It, all right, And then finally, the music in this
film is the work of Mark Isham born nineteen fifty one.
We've talked about him before. Electronic music pioneer turned highly
prolific film score composer, skilled on both the trumpet and
the synth. His early solo music is especially notable. I
went back and was listening to some of it while
I was working on notes here, and it's pretty good,

(49:48):
like some of his I think. His nineteen eighty three
album Vapor Drawings was released on Wyndham Hill, known for
putting out a lot of especially ambient electronic music back
in the day, his work has been held up as
an inspiration by specifically Boards of Canada. And Yeah, all
that being said, I can't say this score really impressed

(50:08):
me beyond like I guess, just doing what a score
needs to do, but you know, still it gets the
job done. He also scored the film Blade, which we
previously discussed on Weird House, which definitely had some nice
meditative tracks on it.

Speaker 3 (50:23):
I don't really remember the music in Timecop except for
the music from Aliens and the trailer.

Speaker 4 (50:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:30):
Yeah, So, like I said, it gets the job done
and that's good, but it doesn't really stand out to
me beyond that.

Speaker 3 (50:35):
All right, you ready talked about the plot.

Speaker 4 (50:37):
Let's do it.

Speaker 3 (50:38):
This movie has a historical cold open. We are told,
little Chyron says Gainesville, Georgia, eighteen sixty three.

Speaker 2 (50:47):
Yeah, this is filmed in Canada, of course, but the
setting is only an hour's drive from where we are
right now. But it's also one hundred and sixty years
from where we are right now, so take that for
what it's worth.

Speaker 3 (50:59):
Yeah, And of course historical setting means this would be
in the middle of the US Civil War inside Confederate territory.
So Confederate soldiers are on horseback. They're clopping along through
the mud and the rain. They are drawing a wagon
behind them. They come across a creepy guy with a
missing tooth standing in the middle of the road, and
he tells them he knows they're transporting a shipment of

(51:22):
gold bullion to General Lee. He says they need to
give him the gold and the soldiers. They keep referring
to him as a single guy as y'all, and I
was like, is that a historically based thing? I was
looking up singular usage of y'all. I found some references
to it, but I don't know if that was intentional.
That might just be a bit of confusion there real quick.

Speaker 2 (51:43):
This particular actor playing the stranger is Callum Keith Rennie
for nineteen sixty. This is pretty early in his career,
but he went on to work a lot on TV,
especially Canadian series. So if this guy looks familiar, that's
why you've probably seen in something.

Speaker 3 (52:00):
He did kind of look familiar to me, but I
couldn't have said from what. But I mainly just kept
noticing his missing tooth, which is he's kind of whistling
through it while he's saying, give me the gold. Anyway.
They won't do it. They say, no, you don't get
the gold. So he opens up his coat and reveals
double laser sighted machine guns from the future and blasts
all the soldiers. And so this might cause one to wonder, oh,

(52:24):
what kind of direction is this movie going in? Is
this like the well worn thought experiment, would you go
back in time and kill Hitler before he came to power?
That this could be a similar thought experiment, would you
economically cripple the Confederacy to cause them to lose the
war earlier? But no, that is not what's going on here.
The chronopirates in time cop are They're not concerned with

(52:44):
disabling Nazi Germany or the CSA. They are after the money.
They want the gold.

Speaker 2 (52:49):
Now they don't bring this up at all, But I
wonder if this is how the time criminals rationalize things
at first. In the same way that the bonejackers and
free jack steal the bodies of people who are about
to die in the past, these criminals at least initially
target the funds of historically losing sides and conflicts. You know,
so it's not actually, you know, it's not paradox free

(53:11):
by any stretch of the imagination. But golden treasure often
vanished during these tense periods in history. So you can
imagine the time criminals being like, all right, well, nobody's
going to miss that amber room if we go back
and snatch it.

Speaker 3 (53:24):
That kind of logic could well be in play. Yeah,
but we don't ever get that full explanation. So we
jump forward in time, like one hundred and thirty years
and see a shot of the Capitol Building. Always love
a shot of the Capitol Building in a movie to
let us know we're in Washington, d C. And it's
got to be accompanied to buy a little title that
says Washington, DC. But now we know it's nineteen ninety
four and it says here's the Senate Oversite Committee covert operations.

(53:49):
So the Senate Oversite Committee here gets a secret briefing
in which they are told the following. Number one, a
time machine has been invented by a scientist on our payroll.
Number two, you can't go to the future. You can
only go back to the past, and we will later
learn you can return to the present moment from which
you came. Number three. This technology is dangerous and it

(54:11):
should never be used. If you go back into the
past and make changes, it could have unpredictable catastrophic consequences
for the future and for this reason, you can't do
like you can't go back and kill Hitler number four
because it's so dangerous. We need to create some new
type of cop, some kind of time cop. And literally

(54:34):
they say we need to create something called a Time
Enforcement Commission to police time itself and prevent dangerous unauthorized
use of time travel. Now this immediately raises big questions like, wait,
what is the authorized use of time travel? A government
scientists just invented time travel, and as far as I
can tell, the only time travel that is then permitted

(54:57):
is to go back in time and stop other pe
people from changing the past.

Speaker 2 (55:02):
Yeah, I guess so. I mean, otherwise, the only thing
I can think of is historical research. You want to
go back and see what actually happened at pivotal points
in history and get a you know, unbiased view of
what occurred. Or it's just purely tourism. I don't know,
Like pick any historic moment in the past, you go
back and you just watch it as a tourist.

Speaker 3 (55:19):
You want to see the Sphinx before the face decayed.

Speaker 2 (55:23):
Yeah, yeah, stuff like that. You want to see like
all of the wonders of the ancient world back when
they were still standing. You know, I guess that could
make sense, But of course we know that it would
never work out like that. I mean, we all know
the about the butterfly effect, we know about the sound
of thunder and Ray Bradbury's stories. We know about Homer
Simpson stepping on dinosaurs. So any of these ideas would

(55:46):
inevitably lead to chaos and paradox, or at least paradox.

Speaker 3 (55:50):
But despite this knowledge, it doesn't stop them from getting
into trouble. You know what, you dad your hands in
the toaster again. It just keeps happening. So this scene
includes a few bits more of of plot set up,
and we see them tap Bruce McGill playing a character
named Matushak to head up the Tec let's see oh,

(56:11):
And they say that they they've got proof that they
need these time cops, and they cite the fact that
terrorists have been purchasing weapons with the use of Confederate
gold stolen from the past, and the agent here says,
we had it carbon dated and it's real.

Speaker 2 (56:27):
I feel like another direction they could have gone in
with this film is they could have had a great
split second esque buddy cop structure where one cop is
an historian who's always on about how he can't cause
ripples in the time stream, and the other is just
all about busting heads in the past.

Speaker 3 (56:42):
Yeah, well boy, But which one would John club Vandam
be the nerd or the Harley Stone guy?

Speaker 2 (56:48):
I mean, that's the thing. Jean Clave van Dam is
kind of both in this. He's he's very he's very lawful,
good until the fight starts, and then he's just brutal.

Speaker 4 (56:57):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (56:58):
I mean, I guess these you can still be brutal
in good in a D and D scenario, but once
he starts fighting, you know, your your DM may ask
for some sort of a check on your on what
your alignment actually is.

Speaker 3 (57:11):
By the way, when I was thinking about this, I
was trying to remember the name of the Rutger Howard character.
In split second, it is Harley Stone. I remembered it, right,
But when I looked that up to confirm, I discovered
this is also the pen name of what appears to
be an author of erotic motorcycle books.

Speaker 2 (57:27):
Okay, I mean it's a good name for that too,
all right. So they have a new government body to
govern time travel. They bring in a guy who used
to run the DC Police force to run it, because
that makes sense. But who's gonna head up oversight over
this program?

Speaker 3 (57:42):
Good question. A grinning ron silver in the corner casually
offers to do it. Yes, yes, I will accept this
godlike power. Sure, And this is Senator Aaron McCombe. Let's
cut to somewhere else. Next we go to a shopping
mall nineteen ninety four. I guess that's supposed to be
a shopping mall in the wash In DC area. And
what can we say to describe this glorious, beautiful setting.

(58:06):
There's like an A and W, a bunch of Kiosk
selling what looked like Christmas decorations. There are big camera
facing advertisements for Nissan and other things.

Speaker 2 (58:17):
Yeah, presumably this is a Canadian mall, because I think
everything was filmed in Canada. But the interiors are great.
I did not see a sign for hot pogos aka
corn dogs, so I was a little disappointed in that.
But otherwise, it's a great mall environment that we find
our characters running around in. And we encounter a little
bit of John claud van dam mall vigilanteism.

Speaker 3 (58:39):
Wait what if this was the same mall as scanners anyway, Yes, yeah, yeah,
so there's vigilantiism. Wait, but before we get to that. Okay,
So there's a flirting meet up between Jehan Claud van
Dam playing police officer Max Walker and Mia Sarah playing
his wife Melissa, and they I don't know, they meet
each other. It's like, oh, hi, I would be nice

(59:00):
if I was married to you.

Speaker 2 (59:01):
Good thing, I am, Yeah, And she makes a crack
about his english and he's likely it's okay, I know
all the best words. And then he leans in and
whispers something in her ear and she giggles. And I
spent way too much time running through the possibilities of
what words he could have possibly whispered to her. And
there are no not dumb choices. They're all ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (59:23):
I assumed he said a bad word.

Speaker 2 (59:25):
Yeah, but even like which one if you start actually
like like framing it out and thinking about it, all
dumb choices. There's there's no suave move. I'm glad. I'm
glad we didn't hear him say it.

Speaker 4 (59:36):
Whatever it was.

Speaker 3 (59:37):
Anyway, she's asking, oh, are you going to take that
new job with the Time Enforcement Commission, and he goes,
I don't bake cookies for a living.

Speaker 2 (59:44):
Okay, it doesn't make sense, but okay, yeah, but.

Speaker 3 (59:47):
Oh so there's there's a mugging. Sorry you mentioned this.
There's a mugging. A dorky looking dude wearing rectangular sunglasses indoors,
a red bandana on his head, a red and white
plaid long sleeve polo shirt with the sleeves rolled up
just a bit to reveal that underneath the plaid polo

(01:00:09):
shirt he is wearing a long sleeve white T shirt,
all of it tucked into jeans, with a belt with
a wallet chain on, rollerblades with neon green laces, and
he rolls by and snatches an old lady's purse.

Speaker 4 (01:00:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:26):
I love this obviously like forty year old punk kid
that they encounter here. And at first I was thinking, oh,
this is probably a stunt player. So you know the
stunt players, you know, they look like what they look like,
and you know. But but I look this guy up
and I think he has like Shakespearean credits in his background.
So I don't know all this casting came together.

Speaker 3 (01:00:44):
But he's got some good stories from the set of
Time Cop.

Speaker 2 (01:00:48):
Yeah, at any rate, does not look like a punk
kid who should be snatching purses in a nineties mall.

Speaker 3 (01:00:53):
Jean Claude van Dam stops him with like the sole
of his boot to his face. Like he doesn't kick him,
but he like does a kick pose with his leg
up at like a you know, a one hundred degree angle.
It's like way up there the boot facing the mugging guy.
He screeches to a halt on his rollerblades and then
he's like, read the soul of my boot, and he

(01:01:15):
reads Wolverine and then anyway, so he like scares the
guy into giving the purse back. So I think we're
supposed to take from this. Oh wow, he's a really
tough cop. He's a really cool guy.

Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
And very lawful. Like you see something bad going on,
he's gonna jump in there and fix things.

Speaker 3 (01:01:39):
So at some point while at the mall, Max glances
up at the mezzanine above them, and he sees a
couple of weird looking dudes staring down at him. These
are going to be recurring characters. These are future time goons.
But honestly, the best way I could describe them is
that they remind me of the early nineties wrestling duo

(01:02:00):
with the Nasty Boys.

Speaker 2 (01:02:02):
You're absolutely right on this. I think this is something.
I didn't think of this while I was watching it,
but something was like sparking in my brain, and yeah,
strong nasty boy vibes to these time goons. Timegons very
much in the spirit of the two Timegoons from Highlander two,
only less extreme, like not that like obviously from the future.
These guys are blending in a little bit. I didn't

(01:02:24):
mark the players earlier, but I think the main ones
we see are Canadian stunt men Brent Woosey and Steven Lambert.

Speaker 3 (01:02:30):
Excellent timegoons. I love them, but as soon as Jean
Claude van Dam glances back, they're gone quick. Note at
the mall, the music they're playing you might not have caught.
This is the band Chicago's nineteen seventy single Does anybody
really know what time it is?

Speaker 4 (01:02:46):
Huh? Nice?

Speaker 3 (01:02:48):
Anyway, Max and Melissa they go back home for some romance,
and then Max gets a phone call saying he has
to go out on some kind of police business and
Melissa has something important to tell him him. What could
it be? But we'll we will have to wait until
he gets back. Unfortunately, that won't happen because he As
he heads out the front door, they are suddenly attacked

(01:03:09):
again by the science fiction punks, including the Nasty Boys
and just guys who generally look like Krang's body in
a trench coat.

Speaker 2 (01:03:17):
Yeah, yeah, again, I think these are all stunt players,
but they're out. They all look tough and or cruel.
Even the guys who aren't his brawny have a real
kind of like lean and hungry look to them. So
I bought all the all the time goods we encounter
in this movie.

Speaker 3 (01:03:34):
So I think you're supposed to wonder, who are these guys, why,
why are they Why is this couple being attacked? We don't,
We are not to know for now. But Max is
shot and left for dead outside, But then it turns
out he was wearing body armor and he survives, and
he tries to go back to rescue Melissa, but before
he can do that, the house explodes in a giant fireball, and.

Speaker 2 (01:03:54):
His movie just keeps things rolling, because before you even
really have time to process this, we're off to another time.

Speaker 3 (01:04:01):
That's right now. It's Wall Street October thirtieth, nineteen twenty nine,
which would be one day after the so called Black Tuesday.
This is the beginning of the Great Depression. We follow
a big wig stockbroker named Atwood who is busy buying
shares of oil companies and such things while everybody else
is busy selling. And we see him consulting a list

(01:04:22):
of stock prices from a copy of USA Today from
the twenty first century.

Speaker 2 (01:04:27):
Uh oh, yep, we have a little white collar time
crime on our hands here.

Speaker 3 (01:04:33):
Yeah, I'd imagine if time travel invented, there'd be a
lot of that. We have a no good time traveler
screwing up the past so we can get rich in
the future. I also have to say it's interesting that
manipulating the past has got to be a lot easier
if it's an open book test, like you can take
newspapers from the future with you anyway. Atwood sitting at
his desk doing financial time crimes, listening to heavy metal

(01:04:55):
music on a secret Walkman that he had hidden in
his bag, and then oh, here's JCVD. Max Walker is
here to arrest him. It seems Atwood is a time
cop like Max, but now he's a time criminal.

Speaker 4 (01:05:10):
Yeah, he turned bad.

Speaker 3 (01:05:11):
And when we see Jean Claude here, he looks very
different than he did before. He's older. Obviously he has
been sent back from farther in the future than the
last scene we saw. So Rob, is it time for
a digression on hair?

Speaker 2 (01:05:25):
Yeah, I think one of the central messages in this
film is that you will have better hair in the future.

Speaker 3 (01:05:30):
I'd say the difference is that he goes from in
the nineties era. He has a sort of slick pompadour
with I don't know what you call that is, like
the is it like the duck back where it's sort
of like rolled in from the sides in the back.
I don't know what that is. In the future, it's
like edge of mullet. But he does look cool.

Speaker 2 (01:05:50):
Yeah, it's like everybody. We also see this with Ron
Silver's character. In the future, hair is going to be slicker.
It's just I don't know, like just the wet look
is in once you get into the far future of well,
what is it two thousand and four?

Speaker 3 (01:06:04):
Yeah, yeah, two thousand and four. So maxterrives to arrest
this guy Atwood. We get an action scene Atwood brings
in his nineteen twenty nine security guys. There's a guy
with like a wax mustache who does the backwards fist
fighting stance, and he just does not stand a chance
against the future based fighting techniques of our hero. But

(01:06:25):
there's exposition in the scene because Atwood reveals that he
is working for a big time crime boss, and his
boss is Senator Aaron McComb. That's Ron Silver. He is
the chair of the committee that oversees time crimes in
the Senate, and now he's running for president. He's smart,
he's ruthless, and he will go back in time and

(01:06:46):
wipe out Atwood's entire family if he testifies against him,
so Atwood cannot flip. Another thing is that Atwood also
explains that Macomb is stealing all this money from the
past for a specific reason he can get money for
his presidential campaign. Something about this seemed really funny to me, Like,
couldn't he just get money from like, if he's gonna

(01:07:08):
do crime, couldn't he just get money from some corrupt,
self interested billionaire in the future. It doesn't seem that hard.

Speaker 2 (01:07:14):
Yeah, I just just juice the donors a bit. But
now he decides to go back in time and do
shady things in the past in order to gain money
to take into the future or to collect on in
the future.

Speaker 3 (01:07:25):
Anyway, Atwood tries to jump out the window at the
skyscraper to avoid being taken back by Walter to testify
or not Walter Walker, But then Walker jumps after him,
and he grabs him in mid air and dials home
on his time phone in midair to take him back,
So the dude is captured. Walker takes him back to
where they came from, which is the year two thousand

(01:07:46):
and four.

Speaker 2 (01:07:48):
He has a far future full of self driving cars
and fancy guns. Basically those the main two bits of
technology we see.

Speaker 3 (01:07:56):
Yeah, a lot of computer screens.

Speaker 2 (01:07:58):
Yeah yeah, but we don't see what they're eating. Don't
get a sense of like what will smoothies be like
in the future, What will Roger be like in the future.

Speaker 4 (01:08:04):
We don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:08:05):
No, they really don't go into that at all. So
they arrive at the Tec headquarters in Washington. This place
is kind of a set from like Aliens. There's no
normal doors in the future. It's all just like the
sliding powered pressure locked doors and the spinning red lights
on the ceiling and all that. So Atwood is taken
straight to his time trial. No lawyer, no jury, here's

(01:08:27):
a judge. You are guilty prepared to die.

Speaker 2 (01:08:29):
Yeah, time Court is more than a little totalitarian. I mean,
I guess at least the judges don't have masks or
hoods on.

Speaker 3 (01:08:36):
And his punishment is this did not make sense at
all to me. It is execution by time travel. So
he is transported back to nineteen twenty nine in the
middle of the air and dropped like on a car,
and he's killed by the impact. I thought the whole
point of the Tec division was to avoid people going

(01:08:56):
back and messing around in the past, and so now
they are executing people for going into the past by
sending them into the past and dropping them on the sidewalk.

Speaker 4 (01:09:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:09:05):
The best I could figure out on this one is
that by the time they arrested him, there had been like, say,
like forty four different changes to the time stream, and
then they did a forty fifth change by stopping him
mid drop, and so they're actually like correcting it by
one by just throwing him back in and letting him

(01:09:25):
finish the fall. M that's my best. That's The's the
best I.

Speaker 4 (01:09:29):
Can do though.

Speaker 3 (01:09:30):
All right, Well, after all this, Max is very disappointed
because he knows Ron Silver is behind all of the
time crimes. But he doesn't have a witness to testify
against him, so we can't do anything about it. So
we see a little bit of the day to day
life of the time cops. We see them, you know,
trying to pick up signals of time traveling assassins, time
traveling thieves. They have to go out and stop them

(01:09:50):
and all that. Of course, the boss is still Bruce
McGill playing this guy named Eugene Matushak. The scene is
interrupted by a tour of politicians who do oversight on
the Tec, including Ron Silver, who has graciously taken time
out of his presidential campaign to accompany them. And you
can see in the office they've got like a dartboard

(01:10:11):
with a Aaron McComb for President poster on it. They
quickly turn that around and hide it. And in this scene,
Walker gets up in Macomb's face and he's like, I
know it's you.

Speaker 2 (01:10:26):
I know.

Speaker 3 (01:10:27):
This is a convention of cop movies. You got to
have the cop, I don't know, be a tough guy
who like lets the crime boss know that he's onto him.
But it makes no sense in the context of this
movie when you know he could go back in time
and wipe you out of existence, which he does do
or he does try to do. And also by doing

(01:10:49):
this this isn't explored, but presumably Walker ensures that Macomb
will go wipe out Atwood's entire family from history, who
presumably did nothing to deserve this, because now he knows
that Atwood told Walker even though he didn't testify.

Speaker 2 (01:11:03):
I mean, he's just lawful, good to a fault. He like,
he comes up to Macombe and he's like, hey, just
so you know, you were breaking the law with all
of this. Yeah, it is illegal. I'm gonna I'm gonna
arrest you one day because that's my job.

Speaker 3 (01:11:16):
Please don't use time travel to destroy me in the meantime.

Speaker 2 (01:11:19):
Yeah, because that's also illegal. Dude, you don't don't do
that as well, because that's that's illegal. You're just going
to more crimes. Come on, cut out the crimes.

Speaker 3 (01:11:27):
Also in the scene, we learned that Macomb missed out
on making billions of dollars because of a bad business deal.
Back in the nineties, he was co owner of a
business that now makes all the super conducting chips that
power all of the time travel technology. But he sold
his share in this company right before his partner got
the patent on the chip, so he missed out on
the money do anyway. In this scene, Ron Silver explains

(01:11:50):
that he wants to eliminate the entire Time Enforcement Commission
because of the dangers it poses. What if an agent
goes back in time and makes contact with themselves with
their own body, and they explained that the you know
this is in the technical reports quote the same matter
cannot occupy the same space at the same time, which

(01:12:12):
made me think, huh, isn't that, by definition what is
always happening?

Speaker 2 (01:12:17):
Yeah, this is a This is like a rule, an
important rule in the in the Time Coop universe, and
it's one that I sometimes I find myself just thinking
back on in life, just trying to figure out what
it means, and I never quite can do it, though
sometimes it does feel truthy enough that if you don't
think about it too much, you can be like, yeah, yeah,

(01:12:37):
that absolutely cannot happen. That would be a paradox and
it would destroy everything. But if you think too hard
about it, there are all sorts of holes that emerge
in the logic here.

Speaker 3 (01:12:47):
But in the context of the movie, literally all it
means is that, like you can't touch the body of
your past self because there will be vague disastrous consequences.

Speaker 2 (01:12:57):
Yeah, it's kind of like in the back of the
future it's a stabt or they're just looking at you
encountering yourself in the past. It could potentially have this
devastating effect. But I don't know. I guess the best
I can do is, like it's like, if you touch
yourself in the past, then that means the effect is
coming before the cause, and there's some sort of temporal

(01:13:19):
like just a paradox that destroys itself kind of thing happens.
That's the best I can do.

Speaker 3 (01:13:24):
But why would that only be touched. I mean you
could cause all kinds of changes, Like characters talk to
each other in the past.

Speaker 2 (01:13:31):
Yeah, well yeah, they breathe in the same room with
each other. And then you can also argue that like
if if it's significantly far enough in the future, it's
not the same matter, like the things have you get
down to discussions of how how much of your body
is the same as your body from ten years ago,
that sort of thing.

Speaker 3 (01:13:46):
That is a very good point. Okay, okay, so wait,
villain scene in a villain limo, this has got a
future villain limo that Ron Silver gets into to talk
about all of his plans to commit more crimes and
do evil. Can we talk about the twenty first century
cars in this film?

Speaker 4 (01:14:00):
Oh? I love them.

Speaker 2 (01:14:01):
These are better than the sci fi cars and free
Jack in my opinion. These big windowless especially the limo,
the presidential limo looks really nice. This just sleek windowless
robot car that you climb into and you ride around
town in.

Speaker 3 (01:14:17):
They look like big dustbusters on top of a set
of wheels.

Speaker 4 (01:14:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:14:22):
Yeah, are some of those like fancy shoes?

Speaker 4 (01:14:24):
You see that? They're like who wears that?

Speaker 5 (01:14:27):
This?

Speaker 4 (01:14:27):
That's what this looks like? All right?

Speaker 3 (01:14:29):
Well, in the car, Ron Silver gets a breakdown of
the latest polling results in his presidential campaign. Now, I
thought it was interesting that a lot of movies of
this period, if you've got a megalomaniac politician as a villain,
the movie would be very vague about what his political
positions were, I guess, for fear of alienating half of
the audience. But Time Cop doesn't shy away. It gives specifics.

(01:14:53):
Ron Silver's constituency is. This is a quote the pro life,
pro death penalty coal and the quote closed the border
America for Americans anti immigration faction. Those are his people.

Speaker 4 (01:15:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:15:08):
As I was watching this film right before this scene,
I was I was thinking idly to myself, I wonder
if Macomb's supposed to be, you know, of this political
party or the other political party. And then they just
straight up and tits tell me yeah, which again, yeah,
is just not the move you would expect from certainly
a modern film with a character like this in it.

Speaker 3 (01:15:24):
Well, his aid says, in order to win, he's gonna
need a lot more money, and then Ron Silver just
like smashes his aid's face against the side of the
car and he's like, don't tell me what I can't do.
He says elections are won with television, while his aid
is cringing and holding his bloody nose. He says he
doesn't need endorsements from the establishment, he doesn't need facts

(01:15:47):
on his side. He just needs money and media exposure.
And to get the television time he needs, he'll have
to steal fifty million dollars. Clearly, Jean Claude van dam
is getting in the way of this, so he asked
this like creepy, silent hinch dude. At the other end
of the limo to go have a chat with him,
and then there's a scene of him just like devilishly

(01:16:10):
chewing peanuts.

Speaker 2 (01:16:12):
Yeah again, offering peanuts to to the a that he
just walloped.

Speaker 4 (01:16:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:16:17):
Just a great villain performance by Silver.

Speaker 3 (01:16:20):
Okay, Next we got an action scene where Walker is
asleep in his apartment and he is attacked by Macomb's goons.
I thought this was a really really fun action scene
and really funny. So like the creepy guy from the
limo attacks him with a taser, there's another guy there
who's like a martial artist who attacks him with a knife,
and there's like a knife duel and the scene also

(01:16:42):
has the famous underwear jump splits onto the kitchen counter
real quick.

Speaker 2 (01:16:49):
The knife wielding guy who's credited his knife number one
is James lu born nineteen fifty two. He was in
Big Trouble in Little China playing one of the gang
members in the Big Gang Battle. But he was also
a martial arts choreographer on that film as well, and
he's been in tons of stuff. He's been like a
go to guy for martial arts in Hollywood for decades.

Speaker 3 (01:17:10):
He's great in this scene and this fight is super fun.
But this is also the fight I was talking about earlier.
That's really funny because they're just like they just keep
like clacking their knife blades together, and you know they're
not that long.

Speaker 2 (01:17:23):
Yeah, yeah, all right, well Walker.

Speaker 3 (01:17:26):
After this fight, he gets a new partner. You know,
his boss is like, this is one of the best
parts of any hyphen cop movie. You got to get
a new partner.

Speaker 4 (01:17:33):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:17:34):
And this is where we meet agent Sarah Fielding.

Speaker 3 (01:17:38):
Right, So they are going to be sent out into
the field together. Fielding is with internal Affairs, and initially
obviously they're butting heads, but they're sent out into the
field together to stop a disturbance in time in nineteen
ninety four that is of course being caused by Ron
Silver going back in time to do something wicked. And

(01:17:58):
this leads to the whole time launch scene. Do you
want to describe the time launch rocket sled scene?

Speaker 4 (01:18:04):
Rob, Yeah? Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (01:18:06):
So we've seen people emerging and re entering like time
distortion bubbles in the in the past already, but we
didn't know how they were getting there. We didn't know
what the apparatus looked like. This is where we find
out via seeing it, but also some narration between the
newbie fielding and and and fandamn, you know the old

(01:18:26):
hand at this and this is where we realize, oh, well,
everything in the time Cop headquarters looks like an underground
bunker because I guess it is. They have some sort
of like weird accelerator system built in here, and it's
how they achieved time travel. It seems to involve climbing
into a rocket propelled sled that is then launched at
some sort of enormous magnet monolith and if it goes

(01:18:51):
everything goes well, then you're going to be like blasted
through the time bubble to your destination. But if it
doesn't go well, you're going to be splash it against
the wall, like the Volmer Twins. Yes, they made well,
multiple mentions to the vulner Twins.

Speaker 3 (01:19:06):
I didn't know. It's almost like that was a reference
to something that like the fans would get, but I
didn't understand what that was about.

Speaker 2 (01:19:14):
Yeah, or I think you mentioned earlier too. Maybe it's
a deleted scene. Maybe there was a scene with Volmer Twins,
Like I want to know more about the Volmer Twins now.

Speaker 3 (01:19:22):
Apparently they were splatted against the wall. But yeah, what's
the deal with So sometimes you go through the rocket
sled and you appear in the past like in the
air and fall into the reflecting pool at the Capitol.
And then other times you just like walk into a
guy's office from the time field.

Speaker 2 (01:19:38):
Yeah, sometimes you just stroll in coolly, you know, as
if you just strolled in from the other side, and
not as if you were just aboard a rocket propelled
sled that was about to make you vomit. So it's
very inconsistent in this film. But I don't know, I
love the inconsistency of.

Speaker 3 (01:20:05):
So Walker and Fielding. They bond, they have some banter
about time travel, and they go back to nineteen ninety
four and investigate this disturbance. Of course, it is Ron
Silver trying to change history. Macomb is going back to
visit himself in an industrial warehouse while his past self
is in the middle of trying to sell out his
share of that computer chip company that would have made

(01:20:26):
him billions if he'd stayed a partner in it. Future
Ron Silver talks to nineteen ninety four Ron Silver. He
tells him to stop eating candy bars, and then he
kills his business partner and he says, you own the company. Now,
why would that be the case if his partner was
just murdered, he says. He says that they can't touch
each other because the same matter cannot occupy the same

(01:20:47):
space at the same time. And then Walker and Fielding
sting the meeting. They come out and they're like hands
up everybody, but Fielding betrays Walker turns out she was
working for Macomb the whole time. And then there's an
another action scene.

Speaker 4 (01:21:01):
This one.

Speaker 3 (01:21:03):
This one, I will say the first half of it
I liked less than some of the other action scenes
because it's just a lot of shooting and it's you know,
standard nineties gunplay slop. But it later turns into a
martial arts scene that involves a what's it called a
liquid nitrogen freezing and shattering moment, which is awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:21:24):
Yeah, because again this has to do with like super
cool computer parts, and also of course they have big,
big containers of liquid nitrogen. One of the time, Goons
gets his arm frozen in a fight with Van Dam,
and then of course Van Dam kicks that arm, shatters
that arm. It's a quality kill. One we've mentioned on
the show before, back when we did an episode about

(01:21:45):
the potential science of freezing and shattering biological matter.

Speaker 3 (01:21:51):
I think that. I think we did a couple of
episodes maybe on that called something like shatter like shatter
me like sub zero. I think, yeah, something like that.
So Walker, So Walker escapes. Fielding is wounded here but
not killed. Walker goes back to the future. Now Ron Silver,
he's changed the past and the future has changed as well.

(01:22:11):
He's way ahead in the polls now because he's so rich.
I guess he's like thirty points ahead. He's definitely gonna
win and become president. Walker convinces his boss Bruce McGill
of what happened, and they managed to send Walker back
to the past in the Rocket Sled once again, despite
the fact that tec is now being ruled over by
a corrupt Ron Silver, whose goons come in and shoot

(01:22:33):
Matuschik and then Walker. So he goes back to the
past once again. There is a redemption scene for agent
Fielding in the hospital. She He goes to talk to
her and she's like, I'm sorry, I worked with Macomb
and she agrees to be a witness in time court
against Ron Silver in the future. But before that can happen,
she is murdered by the Nasty Boys.

Speaker 2 (01:22:56):
I can't remember if it's this scene or earlier, but
we do find out like she's only turned and agreed
to work with McComb because he threatened her parents, right,
I think that's right. Yeah, yeah, so she had no
choice in the matter. I mean, she had a choice,
but she has reasons for turning to the bad side,
which you know, I thought was some good development.

Speaker 3 (01:23:16):
Yeah. Like I said earlier, I kind of wish that
maybe they could have teamed back up and been buddies
for the end. But alas killed by the Nasty Boys,
and so now now dude is on the run. Walker's
running from them and he but then sort of the
plot takes a sharp turn here because he realizes he's
come back in time early enough to prevent his wife

(01:23:39):
from being murdered by the Nasty Boys. So he meets
her in a mall, convinces her that it's really him
from the future, conspires with her in secret to keep
him secret from his past self. Which is interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:23:53):
Oh yeah, there's so much that goes on, like this
film is. It does such a great job of stringing
all this together. Because also while he was checking on
fielding at the hospital he found his wife's pregnancy results
just on the same tray.

Speaker 3 (01:24:06):
I forgot about that.

Speaker 2 (01:24:08):
He's like, Oh, yeah, that's what the secret was that
or that's not the secret. That's what the news was
that she was going to tell me. It was that
she was with child.

Speaker 3 (01:24:15):
Right, Maybe that's the thing that makes him want to
go do this instead of just getting on with his work.
But this leads to a huge showdown at their house
the night Ron Silver's goons are sent back to kill them,
but this time future van Dam is there to help
the two of them in the past, so this turns

(01:24:35):
into a long, massive action sequence at and around their house.
I will say the action here was up and down
for me. There were some parts that were really great
others that were less interesting. But the payoff at the
end when they finally have when they finally confront Senator
Macomb is so good. It's perfect. It has terrible nineteen

(01:24:57):
ninety four CGI. That is one of the most beautiful
things I've ever seen, And it's the payoff of what
we've been hearing the whole movie. The same matter cannot
occupy the same place at the same time. They try
that with Senator mccomb's body.

Speaker 4 (01:25:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:25:13):
Now the setup to this is also brain breaking because
we have the big shootout, all sorts of time goons
are killed. But finally there's like an explosive device. Future
Ron Silver has MIAs Sarah held captive and he's like,
I'll blow it up. You know, it doesn't matter to
me because my future, my past self is out there.
He's gonna benefit. And so if I die now, then

(01:25:35):
he still grows up to be me in the future,
so it doesn't matter.

Speaker 3 (01:25:40):
But he grows up to be you, and then you
come back to the past and die here.

Speaker 2 (01:25:44):
Hey, are you the head of time travel policing, Joe,
trust Macomb. He knows how this works. He's the mastermind.
So at any rate, yeah, I agree that the logic
it does not make sense. No, but Macomb believes that
he has the upper hand here. But then oops in
strolls nineteen ninety four Macomb and he's like, what are

(01:26:04):
you doing here? And he's like, well, you left a
message that I needed to show up here, and he says,
I did no such thing. Ah, this is this is
what van Dam has done. He was the one who
left that message. He orchestrated this and now Macomb's like, well,
this is just going to be a multiple homicide and
now it's going to.

Speaker 4 (01:26:20):
Be a blood bath.

Speaker 2 (01:26:21):
And then then we get the payoff. We get some
fun one liners back and forth, but it ends with
a tussle over the gun and Jean Claude van Dam's
character kicks ninety four Macomb into two thousand and four Macomb,
and now Matter is occupying the same same space at

(01:26:42):
the same time.

Speaker 3 (01:26:43):
So yeah, they start melting together and screaming. At one
point they've got like the two faces and like their
eyes are joining, and it's it's very well. Eventually they
turn into what looks like, I don't like a CGI
version of like an indoscopy procedure, and.

Speaker 2 (01:27:00):
Then this puddle, and then the puddle it just evaporates
into nothing. So it's like they just consume themselves and
are just completely removed from all timelines, though I guess
they can still remember him, so on some level, I
don't know. It breaks my brain if I think about
it too much. But at any rate, Macomb in the past,
Macomb in the future are gone Macomb. It's as if
Macomb never existed. And yeah, I remember thinking this. It

(01:27:24):
doesn't like I say, the closer you look, the more
brain destroying it becomes. But how they good here? And yeah,
it just you gotta Yeah, you can't think about it
too much. But I do remember loving this sequence back
in the day. When I saw it in the nineties,
I was like, this is amazing. These effects are amazing.

(01:27:46):
Now it's a bit dated looking. I think the sound
effects hold up really well. The sound effects help sell it.
I would not want good effects here. I want these
effects to be exactly as bad as they are. It's perfect.
It looks like an after dark screensaver.

Speaker 3 (01:27:59):
It's beautiful.

Speaker 2 (01:28:02):
Yeah, I mean, I guess you know. It shouldn't look
too biological. It's not supposed to look like a realistic
melt because it's not. This is a this is something
happening with like like a time paradox resolving itself by
by destroying matter across time lines or something. At any rate,
it's a quality kill.

Speaker 3 (01:28:21):
Yes, So the evil Senator Macomb is defeated. Jean Claude
van dam, Mia, Sarah and their son live happily ever after,
and we see like into the future and there's like, oh,
happy family times and it's happy ending. We get some sweet.
I think, like some sweet two to do kind of music.
And that's the end.

Speaker 2 (01:28:39):
Now, when Jean Claude Van Kidd runs out and he
scoops him up, I immediately was like, Okay, this is
the happy ending.

Speaker 4 (01:28:45):
But he doesn't.

Speaker 2 (01:28:46):
He doesn't remember. He doesn't know this child at all.
He's gonna have to like go in and get a
full breakdown from from Mia Sarah about who this kid
is and what his relationship to him is. He's gonna
have to look at some photo galleries or something, or
at least it's not implied that suddenly a full recollection
of this timeline comes into his mind.

Speaker 3 (01:29:07):
That didn't make sense to me. I didn't know, and
I don't know. As with all the time paradoxes, I
think you just can't think about it. So that's time cop,
It's time cop.

Speaker 2 (01:29:18):
Yeah, good luck trying to resolve the various time paradoxes
in this film. Don't do not try it. But all
that aside, still a super fun nineties sci fi action film.
Really probably the van dam action film to rewatch on
it if you're not looking for a pure martial arts picture. Now,

(01:29:39):
we of course watched this movie in the future. I mean,
we're in the future even compared to two thousand and four.
We would love to hear from anyone who has recollections
like we do of watching it in the past.

Speaker 3 (01:29:50):
Did you watch it in nineteen twenty nine?

Speaker 4 (01:29:53):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:29:54):
Oh man, that was another thing I was thinking, like
if what else did McComb do to raise money, like
go back in the past. Like maybe as he's running
for president, they're like, hey, he's that guy who wrote
that song, Hey Jude and.

Speaker 4 (01:30:05):
Let it be.

Speaker 2 (01:30:07):
Yeah, he wrote so many classic songs. That's where he
made most of his money. He invented the mister Coffee.
I mean, he's just like looking around his house. It's like,
all right, that guys, get in the get in the
times led, We're going back to invent the mister coffee.
Daddy needs a little more money for the campaign.

Speaker 3 (01:30:25):
He's singing thriller in the commercial for the mister Coffee.

Speaker 2 (01:30:30):
Yeah, another great, great tune that he wrote. All right, Well, hey,
if you want to write into us about time travel
and time cop please do. We'd love to hear from you.
You know, we'll probably discuss those on our listener mail episodes,
which air in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind Podcast.
Feed every Monday. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, we do core
episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. We're mostly a
science podcast, but then on Fridays we set aside most

(01:30:52):
serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on
Weird House Cinema. If you want to see a complete
list of all the films we've discussed so far, you
can go to letter box dot com. That's L E
T T E R B O x D dot com.
We have a profile there it's weird House. We have
a list there of all the films we've done, with
links to where you can listen to them.

Speaker 3 (01:31:10):
Huge thanks to our audio producer Jjposway. If you would
like to get in touch with us with feedback on
this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for
the future, or just to say hello, you can email
us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:31:30):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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