Probably inspired by Van Damme’s Timecop, although this one stands out as its own thing, this time-travelling movie features a bit of an aged Bruce Willis but the majority of screentime is from his on-screen younger self, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt who has Bruce’s gaze down to a T.
It’s a bit gritty but there’s some good action and a somewhat intriguing storyline. I rate this movie just about Above Average.
The lead female is played quite well by Emily Blunt who looks a bit like Sharon Stone.
The boss of the baddies is played by Jeff Daniels — that’s Jim Carey’s sidekick in Dumb And Dumber. He does alright in this role, which is more than I can say for his role in Dumb And Dumber where he’s so unfunny he may as well be Jim Carey’s spare wheel — just like Chandler Bing, he was provided with all the jokes to crack but still had nothing on the entertainment value of Ross & Joey. Anyway, this isn’t about Friends and it isn’t about Dumb And Dumber, it’s about Jeff Daniels being alright in his role as a baddie boss here, although it only works considering how lightweight and “funny guy” Joseph Gordon-Levitt is. Joseph looks like he could actually be Bruce’s son here, or John Travolta’s, or a close relative of both.
The first 10 minutes are cleverly designed to build a backstory to this movie, and while it starts off a bit messy, Tom Cruise‘s presence sharpens it up nicely. By 10 minutes in it’s clear Tom Cruise is playing Major William Cage, some top marketing guy for the military who doesn’t like to get his hands dirty, and upon attempting to blackmail a general, finds himself railroaded to the frontline with his rank stripped and nobody believing his story.
By 20 minutes in, the Major is getting his first taste of battle on the front line and it’s a bit of a nightmare, but it’s well executed, and it soon becomes something quite intriguing, when 5 minutes later he dies and his day restarts and everything becomes Déjà Vu. Then 5 minutes later still – now half an hour in – the day restarts again, so it’s now the third instance of the same day. This time he’s less confused, and tries very hard to prove himself and alert everyone what’s going on, but fails only ends up with a taped up mouth. He also tries fighting the aliens proactively using his limited foresight, but dies pretty quickly. Then we see him die quickly again. Then on the fifth attempt he tries talking to the lead female – the Angel of Verdun, Sergeant Rita Vrataski, played by Emily Blunt – and it’s already clear that he’s been here many times before, the movie’s just skipped several iterations. One the next full reset, we see him try a different tact. He subtly proves his strange abilities to predict the future, and assures everyone he’s not trying to avoid the war – he’s now acting enthusiastic and friendly but not controversial at all – this is of course a rouse to gain everyone’s trust so they all lower their guard and he’s free to do what he needs to do – this time it’s meeting up with the woman who told him to come find her when he wakes up. It seems she has the same ability as he does, and knows all about it. There’s a few nice touches of humour here too.
By 50 minutes in, William Cage (Tom Cruise) and Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt) have met Rita’s friend, a top scientist who understands how this alien enemy operates, and what’s causing the day to keep resetting, and everything becomes clear, or at least as clear as it ever will be. Rita starts training Tom in combat skills, which he’s gravely lacking, and she tells him he needs to make sure he dies every day, else he’s out of the game.
It gets a bit tense, gritty and uncomfortable towards the end of the first hour, and it’s safe to say, most of the fun is already gone now. But there’s still nearly an hour left to go. For this reason, although this movie showed great potential to be arguably the best action hero movie ever made, in the end I’m going to settle for a rating of Very Good, which is no mean feat of course.
After a solid 20 minutes of gritty drama and uncomfortable action, the mood picks up with half an hour to go as the Major & Sergeant come up with a new plan and head to HQ to get what they need. Unfortunately though, this refreshing uplift only lasts a few minutes before it gets gritty again and doesn’t let up till the very end. Nevertheless, we can’t discount the great entertainment value of the first hour, making this a Very Good action hero movie on a par with Denzel’s equally great movie The Equalizer from the same year.
This movie is a strange mix between fast action and vibes of dispair. It takes about half an hour to really warm up, with a strong backstory already built, but it stays a bit confusing right the way through the movie.
By the start of the second hour, the three main protagonists are now somewhat introduced and are working together in a team to track down their loved ones – to rescue them from the aliens who have abducted them. This is probably the highlight of the movie, in terms of mood. But it doesn’t take long till they’re all captured and things become quite depressing right through till the end of the movie – that’s quite a missed opportunity to have a lot more fun, and it brings this movie down from what looked set for a very high rating, down to just Decent which is still no mean feat.
Andy On was impressive, as one of two roughly equal co-stars, called Connor, with vibes similar to Jet Li, just a bit less intense. He was able to match Scott Adkins (who played Quinn – the other co-star) in terms of charisma and screen combat capability, while coming from such a different culture – they made a quite good team.
The lead female – Adkins’ psychiatrist – was played quite well by Vietnamese actress Trương Ngọc Ánh. The second main female – Connor’s kidnapped wife – was played adequately by Lily Ji.
The best bit about this movie is arguably the very ending – it’s got a cool bit of mysterious music at the end, blended in very well with the final scene. It’s not an adrenaline-rush tune, but it’s quite spiritually stirring nevertheless.
This movie is also abundant with metaphors that coincide significantly with theories that became popular around world events that followed this movie’s release in 2019. It’s as if someone were trying to get a message out, but had no permission or trick to do so any more explicitly than were done here. Of course this is pure conjecture, but it kind of makes me respect Scott Adkins a bit more than I previously did. Maybe it’s misplaced credit, who knows. And by the same token, maybe we should respect the weird Wachowskis too, since even though they seem to be much deeper ‘in the club’, and even though they seemed to have the full backing of the system to do so, they basically promoted the same kind of metaphors via The Matrix, and somewhat in Jupiter Ascending too.
Timecop is an interesting, creative story about a time-travel cop played by Jean-Claude Van Damme whose pregnant wife is murdered – he eventually goes back in time to fix it. It’s an interesting story albeit a bit simplistic & monotonous in patches for many-time rewatchers. There’s some good action as you would expect from any prime Van Damme movie. I rate it as an upper-OK movie.
Other key cast members Ron Silver who plays the main antagonist quite well. Ron’s character is a senator who goes back in time to earn money the easy way and support his campaign to become POTUS. There are two significant females in this movie: Mia Sara plays Van Damme’s wife adequately, and Gloria Reuben plays Van Damme’s corrupt partner quite well.
Action Hero Movies
