![]() The film earned $45 million in the US with David Richards of The New York Times calling Timecop Van Damme’s “classiest effort to date”. The box office returns and reviews suggest Hyam hit the mark. ![]() “It was a really clever story, and I thought it was a chance to make the best movie Van Damme ever made.” The Movie ![]() (Producer) Larry Gordon was involved with it Moshe Diamant was a terrific producer Sam Raimi was involved,” he told Empire. “I was approached to do Timecop, and I loved the auspices. In the three decades previous he had made his name with a string of inventive and often underappreciated sci-fi movies like Capricorn One, Outland and 2010. While a high profile, critically lauded filmmaker was always likely to balk at doing a Van Damme movie, Hyams was different. Arguably their masterstroke, however, was hiring Peter Hyams as director. Evil Dead duo Sam Raimi and Robert Tappert served as producers, having already tried their hands at a comic book movie of sorts with the criminally underrated Darkman. The film was in good hands from the off though. Casting Ferris Bueller’s Day Off favourite Mia Sara as Walker’s wife was a smart move too. Yes, the usually mix of high kicks, splits and one-liners are on hand to ensure the fans are fully sated, but there’s something more heartfelt about seeing JCVD’s Walker pine after his lost love. In doing so, the writers give Van Damme the necessary emotional anchor to draw out his best performance to date. Credit should also go to the decision to add an extra element to Walker’s backstory – he’s been tasked with returning to 1994, the year his wife was murdered. Silver is suitably scene-chewing as Senator Aaron McComb, switching between slimy and despicable with ease. Taking a leaf out of Die Hard’s book, the makers of Timecop opted to cast an actor with a theatrical background as the film’s main villain and the movie is all the stronger for it. It’s an oddly prescient bit of writing that’s given further weight by the late Ron Silver’s performance. ![]() They took the action stateside, with Van Damme cast as Walker, the TEC agent on the case of a corrupt politician looking to buy his way into the White House by stealing funds from the past to become a billionaire. Picked as one of the first Dark Horse comics to be adapted to film – alongside Jim Carrey’s The Mask – the project’s first masterstroke was having Verheiden and Richardson return to write the script. The criminal is caught soon enough, but Walker is forced to return back in time again after discovering that the robotic bodyguard is wreaking havoc with his own timeline. They are eventually tracked down by Max Walker, a Time Enforcement Commission (TEC) agent tasked with apprehending illegal time travelers. “ Time Cop: A Man Out Of Time” told the story of a criminal and his robot bodyguard, who travel back to 1930s South Africa to rob a diamond mine. In 1992, Mike Richardson and Mark Verheiden teamed up to write a three-part story, which was drawn by artist Ron Randall for the launch of a new Dark Horse Comics anthology. Timecop’s origins can be traced back to the world of comics. Earning Van Damme his first set of favourable reviews from the critics, Timecop also went on to rake in over $100 million worldwide and remains the Belgian’s top grossing movie. It also proved something else: Van Damme could act. Here was a film that defied genre convention to deliver an enjoyably slick sci-fi yarn alongside the usual high kicking action. Previous hits like Kickboxer had essentially served as showcases for the Muscles from Brussels’ fighting abilities alone but this was different. That was the day Timecop hit cinemas and the moment JCVD’s career changed forever. If Jean-Claude Van Damme were to ever get his hands on a time machine, he might well be tempted to travel back to September 16, 1994. Celebrating Van Damme’s Sci-Fi Classic Timecop (1994)
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