1994 - TIMECOP, a pretty good science fiction film

A fairly decent film for a Jean Claude Van Damme movie.  The time travel plot is well thought through and Van Damme at times actually allows himself to get beaten up by the bad guys.  The plot has Van Damme as guess what, a cop traveling through time attempting to keep a corrupt politician from becoming President of the United States.  The challenge for time cop Van Damme is to keep from changing the future.  This is all fairly cleverly worked out in the screenplay.

The most tiresome aspect of this film is the gratuitous love scene between Van Damme and the actor Mia Sara who gets to roll around naked with Van Damme, lucky her.  You can be sure that someone insisted on inserting this sex tease stuff to satisfy the drooling teenage nerds watching the film.  Later there is a virtual reality nude scene the viewer has to sit through as well that adds nothing to the story.  These scenes actually hurt the film and drag the film into the "B" status category. 

Jean Claude Van Damme was always the poor man's Bruce Lee or Arnold Schwarzenegger (take your pick).  His specialty was kicking people.  In TimeCop he kicks lots of people.  Bruce McGill who played "D-Day" in National Lampoon's Animal House a long time ago, is Van Damme's boss.  Ron Silver is the hiss able evil Senator villain and it's a cliched character to be sure but he puts it over.

 

The action is decent, the story is interesting. Peter Hyams the director keeps things moving along.  The film is entertaining even with it's tiresome sex scenes and for the most part doesn't outstay it's welcome.

The film was written by Mark Verheiden, the running time is 98 minutes.

1986 - RUNNING SCARED, standard buddy cop film stuff.

There's nothing particularly wrong with this buddy cop film from the 1980's but it's not that special.  Comedian Billy Crystal and dancer Gregory Hines are the usual buddy cop team running around Chicago busting heads.  After taking a vacation down in Key West, Florida they decide to retire from the Chicago PD and run their own business in Florida.  The film deals with the two cops trying to finish out their time as cops before they retire without getting themselves killed.  Hence the title Running Scared.

This film was directed by Peter Hyams and per usual photographed by him as well.  It's one of Hyams rare films where he doesn't have a story or screenplay credit. The action scenes are fairly well staged particularly a chase on the famous Chicago "L" line and a shoot out in a high rise towards the end after Crystal's ex wife played by former model Darlanne Fluegel, is taken hostage by some (what else) evil drug kingpin.

 

Crystal and Hines seem like an odd pair to be playing cops but I'm going to assume the thought was to cast against type.  The actor Jimmy Smits early in his career is in the cliched role of the Hispanic drug dealer, it's all fairly standard stuff when you get right down to it.  However the actors do a fairly decent job with their roles.

No great shakes as a film but not bad.   It was written by Gary DeVore and  Jimmy Huston,  the film runs 107 minutes and was moderately successful.

1990 - THE NARROW MARGIN, unnecessary remake

Apparently the director/writer Peter Hyams found the first version of The Narrow Margin, lacking.  He decided to remake it by opening it up.  We have expansive scenes of the train traveling through British Columbia and some action scenes not set in the train.  What Hyams lost by doing this was the sense of claustrophobia and tension that the original version captured so well.

The film has Gene Hackman who does his usual fine job as an assistant district attorney attempting to bring a star witness played by Anne Archer, back to Los Angeles in order for her to testify against a crime lord played by Harris Yulin who's part is way to small.

 

Another problem with this film is the casting of Hackman who was a major Hollywood star.  The viewer knows that nothing is going to happen to him unlike the first version where the cast was played by character actors and their survival was in serious doubt.

The film is watchable enough but rather uninspired, this is just another example of remaking an old film that didn't need remaking in the first place.  Unfortunately as long as there is a movie making business there will always be a "movie remaking business,"  apparently it's just a lot of work to find original ideas.

The running time is 97 minutes.

2005 - A SOUND OF THUNDER, B movie time.

A mighty disappointing adaptation of the very good and maybe even classic Ray Bradbury short story about time traveling hunters who journey back to the Cretaceous Era to hunt dinosaurs.  The catch is that the hunters cannot interfere in the natural development of evolution as they might cause changes to their present day time period.  Bradbury cleverly works this out and shows the consequences of interfering with history. 

What could have been the basis for a good science fiction adventure story ended up as a cheap B movie looking mess.  Apparently the budget was cut during the production of the film and it sure shows with some very poor special effects.  This is the price of computer generated imagery done on the cheap.

That said, the film stuck in some kind of B movie hell hole is actually kind of watchable.  Ray Bradbury's basic plot is such a strong one even a film as poor as this can't entirely ruin it.

What to say about the cast, really not much.  Independent filmmaker Edward Burns is our sturdy scientist hero trying to fix history and because there has to be a girl some British actress named Catherine McCormack is his little scientist helper person.  Only Ben Kingsley as the head of "Time Safari" the time traveling company is any fun as the oily head of the company who wants to make a buck, time travel history interference be damned.

110 minutes.

1988 - THE PRESIDIO, because some one has to watch this stuff

A mystery set on the now dismantled army base Presidio in San Francisco.  The only reason to watch this thing is because Sean Connery is the lead in the film and that's not much of a reason.  Otherwise, the film is an uninteresting action mystery.

Besides casting Connery it's clear that the other leads Mark Harmon and Meg Ryan were hired to draw in a younger audience with the promise of watching a couple of supposedly sexy young actors generate some heat.  Harmon's career in film never really took off, he was just a little more bland then usual for a white guy in the movies.  Mark Harmon ended up back on TV a few years later.  What can you say about Meg Ryan?  She was the perfect bland Hollywood leading lady until she committed the sin of growing old.

The mystery in this film isn't very interesting, the car chase isn't very interesting, the action scenes aren't very interesting the whole film just ticks along to the big resolution which wraps up with a boring machine gun fight.  When you can't make a machine gun fight interesting you have a big problem. 

Just another cookie cutter action film.

97 minutes.