I'm here to make sure all your clocks are synchronized.

Donkey: If there’s one premise that will almost assuredly mean that a movie that you’re about to watch is about to be complete bullshit, it’s the subject of time travel. The method, governing rules, and possible results of time travel vary greatly from movie to movie, and no franchise handles it with less care than the Star Trek series. One moment they treat it like it’s a monumental task that can only be achieved by slingshotting yourself around the sun with a couple of whales, and then in the next moment treat it it’s a goddamn footnote to preventing the Borg from invading the Earth, less remarkable than Data getting a robo-boner. But they are far from alone, as this has been a popular subject amongst science fiction movies for as long as they have existed. The problem is that most of them assume that your knowledge of physics and the theory of time travel is strong enough only to realize that if you stuff Cheetos in your face, they will eventually make their triumphant return in your toilet a few hours later. So if I’m going to be patronized, I want to be patronized by a man doing the splits.

The Plot:

Donkey: Despite what the title would lead you to believe, Timecop is actually the story of Van Damme as he struggles to run a small haberdashery in the heart of eighteenth century London. With the pressure of rising textile costs and the overwhelming expectations of an overbearing father, Van Damme silently struggles through his inner turmoil while trying to gain the favor of his landlord’s comely daughter.

Seriously, wouldn’t it be awesome if that were the case?

Actually, Timecop is exactly what you’d expect it to be. In the far distant future, all the way in the year 1994, time travel has been perfected, provided that you consider throwing yourself at a wall and hoping that you don’t die perfection. As a result, the US government creates a secret organization dedicated to patrolling time and making sure that no one attempts to alter it for their own gain. But when JCVD, their star agent, discovers that the politician responsible for overseeing the department has been corrupted, he must find a way to stop the Senator’s exceptionally modestly evil ambitions.

The Case for Greatness (aka The Lowlights):

Exhibit A: Gentlemen, Find Me The Greatest Ballerina In All The Land

I've come back to ask y'all for your gold and your flossing techniques.

Donkey: Our feature starts as all tales worth telling happen to, in Gainesville, Georgia circa 1863. A small band of Confederate troops wanders down a lonely road in the pouring rain, having taken some time away from subjugating black people and planning weddings between cousins to transport a cache of the much famed Confederate gold. But their journey comes to an end moments later when they approach a lone figure standing in the middle of the road, blocking their path. Since we never learn his name, we’ll simply call him the Gummy Avenger. As they politely ask him to move, the Gummy Avenger counters their offer by suggesting that they hand over all their gold to him, all the while grinning like he just ripped a Taco Grande fart. That grin is especially noteworthy and his name becomes immediately appropriate when you realize that this man ironically has fewer teeth than the Confederate soldiers that he’s robbing. Having our pal Gummy quite outnumbered, the soldiers naturally laugh at his request, chuckling all the way to the grave as GA pulls out two fully automatic weapons and shoots them dead, a feat of marksmanship that is quite impressive when all their horses trot away quite alive without their mounts moments later, even though he was spraying bullets with less accuracy than a John Holmes money shot.

Now what do I have to do to put you folks in this Sunfire today?

With the threat of toothless men traveling back in time to steal a form of currency that’s all but theoretically useless to most of the world’s populace from other men whom are miraculously free of dental diseases having been established, the question now turns to whether or not the rest of the world will ever be able to sleep another night without falling into the depths of an oral hygienic nightmare. If you’re anything like me, then pondering this inevitably brings you to the answer, “shit no”. And as luck would have it, we’re not the only ones. We shift forward in time to the modern day, presuming that the modern day is somewhere in 1994, to see the repercussions of this interference with the space time continuum. A meeting of the Senate Oversight Committee for Covert Operations is called, where a group of politicians are presented with the news that time travel has been perfected. After an exceptionally elementary speech on how changing events in the past can cause ripples that will make drastic changes to the future, perhaps even going so far as to destroy mankind, the bureaucrats argue that it must be protected. To hammer home their point, they use the example of our friend, the toothless gold miner, to warn that they have already encounters dangers, having stopped an arms deal in Germany involving Middle Eastern terrorists that was being financed using the stolen confederate gold. The Senators listening to this pitch seem convinced, and the agency known as the Time Enforcement Commission is born. Ron Silver, playing Senator McComb, volunteers to chair the committee while looking on with the kind of moderately evil expression that could either mean that he will go on to be the film’s main antagonist or that he’s about to try to sell us a used Pontiac.

The face of disappointment.

And now that we’ve established the institution of the Timecops, it’s time to introduce the man who will lead them to glory. The movie cuts to a mall where Ferris Bueller’s girlfriend, Mia Sara, is approached from behind by a strange man with a thick Belgian accent. Hoping to turn around and discover a vision of rugged masculinity who will teach her the sensual French arts that unlock the doors to Flavor Country, she instead finds JCVD. Damn. I was kind of hoping it was going to be Cameron Fry. Once they’re finished playing the classic ‘let’s try to revitalize our failing sex life by pretending you’re a whore’ game, Van Damme explains that he has just come from a meeting with Matuzak, the head of the TEC. But before he can share the outcome of that meeting, danger rears its ugly and horribly stereotypical head. A dude on rollerblades, whom should be put to death for rollerblading through a fucking mall in the first place, snatches the purse of an elderly woman and tries to make a break for it. Unfortunately for him, the world’s deadliest ballerina is on the case! As he tries to make his obnoxious getaway, he comes face to face with the surprisingly small boot of justice. But rather than making the punk swallow his own teeth, Van Damme instead simply kicks his foot up to the punk’s face level and intimidates him into submission by asking him to read the logo on the sole of his boot. Rather than just turning and going to other goddamn way, this actually scares the failed thief into surrendering the bag back to the old lady and sulking away in shame.

Hey buddy, can you check to see if I stepped in dog shit?

There is no time in the history of man that this hair style wasn't considered retarded.

As he admires his own handiwork, JCVD looks up to a railing above him to see two random dudes with bad hair staring at him. With coifs like that, you know that they must mean business. Clown business, but business nonetheless. But being a man who laughs in the face of danger as readily as he will in the face of quality scripts, Van Damme looks back a second later only to discover that they’re gone. But rather than wonder who the fuck gets a haircut like that on purpose, he instead goes back home with his wife to make with the sexy time. If there’s a better way to end a scene than showing me Jean Claude’s ass, I don’t know what it is.

As they lay around at the end of what was likely a four hour tour of sexual delights that no mere mortal man could possibly Shirpa a woman through, JCVD gets a call from work asking him to come in immediately. Mia begs him not to answer it, but his sense of duty provides a convenient excuse to get the hell out of the non-splits involving cuddling that was sure to soon follow. As he leaves through the front door of a house big enough that no fucking cop could possibly afford it, he’s attacked by the two dudes with the Flowbee haircuts that he saw earlier at the mall, while others drag his wife upstairs and try to finish the job that Van Damme couldn’t. Once they slap him around to their satisfaction, the cyberpunks finally shoot Van Damme twice in the chest at point blank range and walk away. Naturally JCVD reveals that he was wearing a bulletproof vest a moment later, as he gets up to see his wife screaming in their bedroom window. But just as he tries to rush back into the house, the entire house explodes in a way that could only actually happen if the entire goddamn foundation that it was built on happened to consist of dynamite. We’re not really sure why, but I suspect that after having experienced dozens of orgasms at the hands of Van Damme, his wife had been brought to the very precipice of pleasures that no one was meant to achieve, and when someone tried to touch her again, her vagina simply exploded. But hey, it’s just a theory.

I wonder if I left the stove on...YAARRRGGGHHHH!!!

Exhibit B: Dr Splitslove or How I Learned To Stop Worrying About My Dead Wife And Love My Mullet

I can't wait for the future when we replace our iPods with...what the fuck is that?

With that random act of unmotivated violence complete, it’s time once again travel into the past. In this case find ourselves arriving on the magical day of October 30th, 1929. A man named Lyle Atwood walks into an office on Wall Street, pulls out a newspaper from the distant year of 2004, and proves it to be entirely useless by laying out his plan to invest solely in oil companies. Did you really have to bring stock quotes back from the future with you if you were going to only pick one product? Couldn’t you just write a note on your hand that says, “Remember: invest in oil, pick up cat food”? To really get himself in the mood to do some evil investing, he pulls out what appears to be some kind of Future Walkman that plays an audio format that I’ve never fucking seen before to listen to some future music. I know how he feels. Not even planning my future wealth can suppress my need to RAWK! But just as he gets comfy, Van Damme steps through a time portal in the middle of the room. But this isn’t the cock-eyed young dancer Van Damme that we’ve seen up to this point. This is a grizzled, battle-hardened, mini-mullet sporting Timecop of the future. They greet each other knowingly and establish that they are ex-partners at the TEC. Van Damme starts to calmly gather up all the future stuff sitting around in the room while Lyle tries to justify his actions, saying that he won’t change anything but his own bank account. And as he talks, Lyle hits an alarm under his desk that summons two hilariously unoriginal 1920′s strong men who apparently skipped out of their fighting classes to concentrate on mustache waxing techniques. Van Damme naturally destroys them both, knocking the first one out rather easily before taking on the second one using a deadly combination of wall-running and completely unnecessary splits. Still not willing to give up, Lyle pulls out a Future Gun and proceeds to shoot the whole fucking office up, sending his coworkers away screaming. You know, for a guy trying to stop Lyle from changing the past, Van Damme’s doing a shitty job of it. Once he runs out of ammo and resigns himself to the fact that there is no man alive who can stop the Muscles from Brussels, Lyle reveals that he was sent back by Senator McComb who’s gathering money to fund his campaign for President. Van Damme doesn’t believe him at first, because apparently a crooked US Senator is a totally unbelievably premise, and tells him that Lyle that he has no choice. After saying that he doesn’t either, Lyle takes off and jumps out of a window. Still not willing to give up even in the face of the formidable duo of opponents that are gravity and really fucking hard pavement, Van Damme doesn’t hesitate to follow him out the window. As the two of them hurdle towards the ground together, JCVD grabs Lyle and hits a button on his belt that conveniently opens up a time portal right in front of them, taking them back to the future. The day has been saved! Hurray! Oh, except if you consider the crowd of people who watched you open a goddamn time portal, which should definitely change something about the future that they’re returning to. In that case you might want to wait before putting that trophy on your mantle.

Van Damme faces his most terrifying opponent yet: my elementary school vice principal.

Oh yeah, there's nothing weird about looking up and seeing that.

The movie returns to the future again, all the way to the inconceivably distant year of 2004, showing Van Damme and his captured prey in the TEC offices where Van Damme tells Lyle to testify and he’ll do what he can for him. Justice is apparently a speedy process in the future, as the two of them stand before a judge moments later, whom Lyle refuses to speak to, despite Van Damme’s pleading. Since he offers no defense of any kind, Lyle is sentenced to death, which is carried out immediately by putting him back in the exact same position in the past that he was saved from: falling to his doom.

With that business at an end, our focus turns to a Timecop staff meeting that Van Damme interrupts in an attempt to share his revelations about Senator McComb with his boss, Matuzak, only moments before a small group of politicians and bureaucrats, including Senator McComb himself, barges into the office for a tour. As McComb and JCVD dance with very little subtlety around the fact that they both know that he’s crooked, a couple of key plot points are established. First the group makes fun of McComb for having sold off his stake in the company that manufactures the chip that enables time travel, a move that cost him billions of dollars. Then Matuzak drops an obvious bomb of foreshadowing, explaining that one of the dangers of time travel is that if someone goes back and runs into themselves, the results can be catastrophic as the same matter cannot occupy the same space at the same time.

As he leaves the brief meeting with his soft-shoed rival, McComb jumps in the most fucking awesome future limo I’ve ever seen, where he gets an update on the latest poll results in his presidential bid. His assistant declares that while he’s making inroads, McComb’s numbers aren’t high enough and that he’s going to run out of money before all is said and done. And while part of me is desperately hoping this news will convince McComb to give up this idiotic path and turn to something truly evil, like traveling back in time to arbitrarily rape Tony Danza while yelling, “now who’s the boss?”, he dismisses his assistant’s advice by smashing his face into the side of the car. McComb declares that elections are won with television and money, and that all he needs is fifty million to buy the network time that he needs. Wow, Senator, that’s…really underwhelming. So the movie’s evil mastermind is stealing money to buy network air time? If he commits the heinous crime of misappropriation of funds on top of this, McComb might just become the next Hitler.

So if I'm to believe this movie, the primary complaint among car consumers in the future is the hassle of actually being able to see out of them?

Back in the TEC offices, Van Damme finally reveals the news of Lyle Atwood naming McComb to Matuzak before going home alone in another fucking awesome future car, which in his case drives itself. Apparently not very well, though, as it screeches its way around a corner when it pulls up to his place. Van Damme enters his dark future apartment and immediately turns on an old home video of him and Mia Sara trying to build a birdhouse before they give up and have a poorly motivated horizontal mambo session in the park. He recites his parts along with the tape while drinking, which one can only presume is mere moments before he begins a tear-filled jerk off marathon. Ah…that takes me back to Friday nights with season one of The Golden Girls on DVD. Who hasn’t been there?

The scene fades to the next morning, where a news story playing on the TV in the background declares that McComb’s campaign is out of money as JCVD lays asleep on his couch. While he dreams of tight pants and deli sandwiches, a laser sight makes its way onto his forehead. But just as the mysterious attacker pulls the trigger, Van Damme wakes up and somehow manages to get out of the way just as the Taser strikes. After taking the assailant, whom we’ll refer to as Dynamo, out with a simple throw, Van Damme turns to face an Asian opponent whom is naturally in the movie only to provide some kind of plausible opponent that is as well versed as him in martial arts. To show off how badass they are, Van Damme and the Karate Kid engage in what has to be one of the fucking dumbest conceptual fights ever scene in films, the knife fight. Apparently we’re not supposed to realize how goddamn impossible it would be for anyone to parry an attack using a three inch blade. Well, I guess it would be far more implausible in this particular case if Van Damme actually moved his hand. But instead he just holds his knife up in front of his face and the Karate Kid just continuously slashes at it, rather than just sticking him in the kidneys. The fight ends in his kitchen, with Van Damme lying face down on the floor while a water jug spills out all around him and Dynamo takes aim at him again with his Taser. But being fully trained in the art of awesome, Van Damme avoids the attack by jumping up and doing the splits on his counters to stay safely out of range, while the Taser hits the floor and causes Dynamo to be electrocuted by the water he’s standing in. Just as Jean Claude smashes Dynamo through the front door of his apartment, an Internal Affairs agent named Fielding shows up with beat cops right behind her to clean up the mess.

Thank God he's in his underwear. I was worried for a second that I wouldn't be forced to see his balls in this movie.

As that mild dose of action draws to a close and I gradually stop karate chopping the couch while reciting quotes from Sixteen Candles, the movie returns to TEC Headquarters where JCVD bursts into Matuzak’s office to declare that McComb tried to have him killed and to demand to know why he’s being followed by Internal Affairs. Matuzak explains that it’s because his partner went crooked, so AI isn’t sure if he can be trusted, so Fielding will be following him on his next mission. He gives the typical buddy cop action movie speech about not working with partners, which is so old by now that I’m pretty sure it could write a firsthand account of the Lincoln presidency, just before an emergency situations is declared. The three of them run to the control room where they find Ricky The Tech digitally fucking a woman using the shitty future equivalent of a Virtual Boy. This adds absolutely nothing to the film besides an excuse to show another naked woman and to tee up Van Damme for the awesome line, “Looks like safe sex to me.” Sweet.

Exhibit C: Apparently The Corrupt Are Pretty Good At Corrupting Other People…Who Knew?

Once the details of the time emergency are laid out, Van Damme suits up to take care of the breach. As he and Fielding march into the launch area, we finally see the movie’s actual method of time traveling for the first time. It consists of a rocket sled on a stretch of track that speeds towards a giant arch. As long as the sled gets up to the right speed, it passes through a time portal just before the arch and goes back through time and space. But the single greatest part of this process is that on the other side of the arch there is a fucking brick wall. This means that if something goes wrong and the pod doesn’t successfully travel back through time, it smashes into the goddamn wall at an incredibly high speed. Van Damme illustrates this by pointing out the two massive blotches of red on the wall that apparently used to be a pair of twins that failed to launch correctly. The movie rolls right past these details rather quickly, but these are plot points that stand out amongst all shitty movies as so fundamentally retarded that we really need to stop and think about this. If your method of time travel involves a rocket sled getting up to what Doc Brown has scientifically proven to be the required 88 miles per hour, why the fuck would you build a goddamn brick wall three feet past the point that the sled is supposed to disappear, other than creating an arbitrary element of lethal danger? Couldn’t you just have another fifty feet of track after that, so the goddamn sled could come to a gradual stop if something went wrong and you could, I don’t know, maybe try again? What goddamn Marketing major designed this fucking thing? And if two people had died smashing into that wall, why the fuck are their blood stains still on that goddamn wall? Is the wall itself not a terrifying enough threat to deter failure?

Theoretical danger isn't enough. Let's add a physical threat for no reason at all. Oh, and never clean the thing. Perfect.

Once the launch is completed successfully, which is denoted by Van Damme and Fielding’s faces being warped before the sled disappears into a time portal, the two of them drop into a lake in the middle of Washington DC. Again, this isn’t mentioned, but it completes a trifecta of stupidity when it comes to the time travel process in this movie. The two of them disappeared in the time portal with the rocket sled, but arrived in the past without it. So where did the goddamn sled go? Why exactly would it not travel back with them? Did anyone actually write this script, or did the Awesome-O 5000 spit it out for a boardroom full of Hollywood executives? Regardless, having arrived in the past, our two heroes walk towards their destination while making idle chit chat about their jobs and philosophical views on life, managing to make the subjects as remarkably boring as you would think. When they finally arrive at the Parker McComb Datalink industrial warehouse which we must presume is their destination, they split up to sneak in.

Ice to see you!

Inside the building we see a younger Senator McComb, or Past McComb, about to sell his part of the company, the move which was mentioned previously in the future as one that cost him billions of dollars. Just as his partner, Parker, hands McComb a cheque and says that he’s out of the company, Future McComb arrives through a time portal with a group of thugs and stops the transaction. Naturally JCVD steps in, as he and Fields quickly subdue the group. But just as JCVD goes to collect McComb’s Track & Return module and face McComb for a moment of gloating glory before returning him to future to face charges, Fields turns her gun on him. With the tables turned, McComb shoots Parker dead. But just before Van Damme shares a similar fate, he of course manages to create a distraction that allows him to escape. At that point the movie gives us a painfully stereotypical sneak and fight scene, where Van Damme takes out all of McComb’s men one at a time. After knocking the last thug into liquid nitrogen and shattering his arm with a kick, Van Damme finally faces off with McComb and Fielding. McComb watches to two of them grapple for a moment before getting bored, shooting Fielding, and going back into the future. As he hears sirens gradually arriving on the scene, Van Damme checks on Fielding before fleeing back to the future himself.

Van Damme arrives back in TEC Headquarters in 2004, coming to a smooth stop in the time pod before getting out, which represents the final slice of bread in this time traveling shit sandwich. To review: they leave in a pod, arrive in the past without it, but return to the future back in it somehow? This whole movie is taking a piss in my mouth right about now. As he walks back into the office, he learns that McComb is in the process of tearing down the whole department. Now that he has changed the future so that he didn’t lose out on those billions, McComb’s way out in front of the polls and has money to burn. Not giving up that easily, Van Damme tries to look up Fielding in the computer to prove his allegations that McComb has been tampering with the past. Unable to find any record of her, he realizes that the only way to prove his case is to go back, find Fielding, and convince her to testify. And why not? One random person’s testimony should be enough to drag down a prominent politician who’s on the verge of becoming the next president. It’s not like you could just manufacture that testimony by hiring a coked-up prostitute off the street. He, Matuzak, and Ricky The Tech prove that McComb had his own time machine by looking at electricity spikes before Matuzak finally agrees to send him back for shits and giggles. He and Van Damme go and fire up the equipment, as apparently the complicated process can be handled quite easily by two people, even when one of them is just sitting in the pod. But before Jean Claude can get away safely, two soldiers burst in to stop them. Undeterred, Matuzak tries to finish the process, only to be shot. But as he falls dead, he hits the last button which not only starts the pod but also delivers his revenge, as the pod belches out a massive flame that engulfs the two soldiers who shot him. Apparently military training doesn’t include the common sense required to not stand directly behind a rocket.

Sarge, permission to deploy marshmellows, sarge!

I made it! Thank God I'm now safe from all but the most arbitrary of dangers!

Seeing as his latest jaunt into the near distant past has the potential to exonerate him, save Fielding from rotting in a foreign reality, and bring McComb to the white-collar, prison resort justice that is sorely deserved, it’s a given that the entire operation is an utter failure. JCVD arrives on a highway, appearing in front of a rig only seconds before it creates a new recipe for ballerina goulash. He has only enough time to sense the impending danger and kiss the pavement, allowing it to run harmlessly over top of him. With yet another arbitrary danger overcome, Van Damme finds a phone booth where he dictates to his Magic Future Palm Pilot, which manages to locate Fielding in a hospital from a data source powered by rainbows and maintained by unicorns. He manages to reach her and convince her to testify without incident. But while he goes to retrieve a blood sample that the hospital took from Fielding, to serve as proof that she was actually there should she not make it back, he finds a blood sample belonging to his wife’s right next to it. For some reason the vial of blood has a piece of paper attached to it, revealing that the sample was taken for a pregnancy test, which came back positive. I didn’t think they strapped a patient’s entire fucking history chart to a vial of blood in a lab, but whatever. And it’s a good thing that he went and got that sample, as when he returns to her room to collect Fields, he finds that she’s been killed. As the homicide is discovered by a nurse and hospital security is called with the impression that Van Damme did it, we see the two Wonder Hair Twins from the beginning of the movie strolling away from the crime.

Look past the tragic hair, baby! It's me!

With his mission’s lack of success taking a back seat to the news that a woman can successfully mate with a cocked trigger of badassery, Van Damme decides to make a change in his plans and head for the mall where we were first introduced to him. After all, the only thing that makes a movie better than Van Damme is having TWO Van Dammes! He rushes to meet up with his wife in that same spot before Past Van Damme has the chance to. But even in the face of impending doom, his own fate is still assigned second priority to stopping petty theft, as he takes a moment to stop the same rollerblading fruitcake from committing the preordained mugging, slapping him down and explaining that’s for what he was going to do. With justice once again done, he grabs his wife and tells her that she must come with him. They run into the service area of the mall, ducking into a storage room to avoid the Vidal Sassoon Duo who are in hot pursuit. Once they’re inside, he explains to her that he’s from the future and convinces her that he needs her help. Once she agrees, he takes her back to find Past Van Damme, telling her not to tell him anything about what she’s learned. With the wheels of fate now set in motion, taking us past the highly improbable to lead us into the land of the utterly ridiculous.

Exhibit D: The Cure Might Just Be Worse Than The Disease

As our journey through time, space, and bowel irritation comes to a close, the film takes us back to Van Damme’s house on that same dark and stormy night that had sealed his wife’s fate. As the Past JCVD goes to answer that same phone call that to pulled him away before, Mia goes downstairs and finds Future JCVD hanging out in their pitch black living room. As he assures her that she must find a way to keep his past version from leaving the house, they notice the lights of the fated attackers coming towards the house. His wife goes back upstairs to keep Past JCVD occupied while Future Van Damme goes outside to kick some ass. And thus begins one of the strangest siege scenes I’ve ever seen.

While Future Van Damme takes on one member of the Mighty Hair Brigade in the yard, finally killing him with the help of a clothes line, others manage to make their way inside the house, where they end up battling Past Van Damme and Ferris Bueller’s girlfriend on the roof. And really, why not? If my wife were pregnant, I can’t think of a better place for her to be in the pouring rain that climbing around on the roof. Eventually the wife manages to make it back in the house safely while Past VD gets shot in the bulletproof vest again, falling unconscious to the ground below. Finally Future VD fights his way into the house, taking out more faceless henchmen until he finally finds Future McComb holding his wife hostage. As he gives Van Damme a very tired and predictable lecture, one of his lackeys sets a ridiculous looking C4 bomb. After another brief battle between the remaining Monument to Hair Style Perfection and the two Van Dammes, Future Van Damme returns to the bedroom to find McComb and his wife still waiting there. Future McComb begins to lecture again in a feeble excuse for the scene to have some kind of dialogue that isn’t a catch phrase, but is silenced moments later when Past McComb walks in. While the two McCombs share mutual confusion as to why the hell he’s there, Future Van Damme reveals that he left a message with his Past McComb’s office in the guise of Future McComb. As Future McComb starts to grasp that this means that Past McComb can’t be saved from the blast of the bomb, Van Damme motions to his wife, who in turn wrestles away from McComb while getting shot in the shoulder in the process. But to seal their fate and finally make use of the theory that they’ve spouted several times in this movie for no particular reason, Future Van Damme kicks Past McComb into Future McComb, who stands there for an awfully long goddamn time just waiting to make fatal contact with himself. The two of them finally collide and meld together into a CG blob of gore that eventually dissipates on the floor.

I hate to burst this movie's bubble, but technically two versions of one person touching isn't the same matter occupying the same space. They would have to find some way for one to reach into the other. Still, nice CG.

But the day is not saved quite yet. With a mere thirteen seconds left on the bomb’s timer, Van Damme runs over and grabs the body of his unconscious wife, manages to run downstairs and out of the house, making it walk way down the front lawn before the timer hits zero and the bomb goes off. They fall to the ground together in a dramatic yet disgustingly standard slow-motion-falling-away-from-an-explosion shot, before he leaves her lying with his past self out in the pouring rain for the police to find. And once again, why not? Your injured and pregnant wife catching pneumonia is a hardly worth even considering.

Why not just kick her in the stomach? It would be faster at least.

The scene fades back into the future, where Van Damme arrives back at TEC Headquarters from his fantastic journey into the past. He steps out of the time travel area to find Matuzak still alive and waiting for him. When Jean Claude asks what happened to Senator McComb, Matuzak looks at him like he’s a moron. He says that McComb walked out of his office ten years ago and was never seen again. Fair enough, but if McComb’s fate was that unremarkable in this future, why does Matuzak remember that ten years later? Not only does he remember who McComb is, but he also remembers that well enough to recite all the details the moments that Van Damme asks. Satisfied with that news, Van Damme starts to walk out of the building, passing by Fielding in the hallways. Yep, things are definitely looking different. He proceeds on to his home, where his ten year old son rushes out to meet him, followed by his wife. They share a tender moment before they all go inside and the movie ends.

Hey, it's...um...you!

Before you grab a tissue and applaud the closing of that exceptional film, I’d just like everyone to stop and think about that ending for a moment. Van Damme has returned to the future to find that he was successful in saving his wife. Great. The problem is, he now has a ten year old son that he’s technically never met, since he’s from an alternate reality where that kid never existed. Not only that, but he’s lost an entire decade with his wife. What kind of fucked up hell is that? He doesn’t even know the name of his goddamn son, let alone remember any event that has occurred in his life up to this point. And can you imagine going home to a spouse that you haven’t seen or spoken to in over ten years? Seriously, what kind of fucking ending was that? But then, considering how little to do with time travel made any sense in this movie, it’s just the cherry on top of the dickcheese sundae. Enjoy.

The Verdict:

Donkey: When it comes to hilariously tragic cinema, Van Damme stands alone as the king. Once again, he has delivered a movie that has every element of shitty perfection that you could possibly ask for. It takes a horribly implausible premise in time travel and preforms it in a way that’s laughably ludicrous, adds a perplexingly underwhelming villain that is stealing money to finance something as idiotic as a presidential campaign, and finishes it off with an ending that seems happy until you stop for one moment to consider what it’s true ramifications are. When you throw in the staples of unnecessary splits and multiple Van Dammes, this movie reaches a plateau of awesomeness that few can hope to achieve. I remember when this movie first came out on video, my older brother recommended that I buy it, as it was his favorite Van Damme movie. I might not have listened to him then, but years later, I followed that advice and reaped the hilarious results. I give this movie five Buellers out of five hair stylist’s nightmares.

What We Learned:

Donkey: Apparently running for public office requires a lot more time travel than I had orignally suspected. But then, that does explain George Bush.

Don’t forget to check back every Sunday for a new fresh review! Next week shittymovienight.com presents: Dolph Lundgren as he delivers a performance more plastic than the toy on which it was based in…MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE.

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