Timecop: The Berlin Decision starts in Berlin in 1940 where Time Enforcement Commission (T.E.C.) agent Ryan Chan (Jason Scott Lee) manages to prevent renegade Society for Historical Authenticity agent Brandon Miller (Thomas Ian Griffith) from assassinating Adolf Hitller & preventing both the Holocaust & World War II & thus changing history. Back in 2025 & Miller is sent to prison while Chan feels burned out, then suddenly T.E.C. agents start to disappear from the time-line. It turns out that Miller has escaped from prison & is going back in time eliminating the T.E.C. from history so they never existed & therefore no-one ever stops him from assassinating Hitler, Chan realises this & sets out on a mission across time to find Miller & stop him from killing his parents & restoring time to how it was...
Directed by Steve Boyum this was a straight-to-video/DVD sequel to the rather good Jean-Claude Van Damme sci-fi action flick Timecop (1994) & a subsequent short-lived TV series of the same name which ran for a meagre nine episodes in 1997 before it was canned, while it's not a complete disaster & not as bad as I expected that's still no sort of recommendation & it's certainly nowhere near as good as the JCVD original. As the title suggest the films main plot revolves around an assassination attempt on Hilter in Berlin by a time-traveller which JCVD's replacement Jason Scott Lee has to foil & thus sets up the rest of the film. I did like the idea of the theme revolving around the moral questions about time-travel & whether it should be used to rectify past events like preventing the death's of eleven million innocent people as a result of Hitler & World War II rather than a plot that revolves around some bad guy wanting money &/or power. Unfortunately not much is made of this angle & Timecop: The Berlin Decision quickly descends into a series of cheap action set-pieces in which B-Movie action stars Griffith & Lee battle it out across various points in time as Chan has to defeat Miller & prevent him from killing his parents & thus erasing him from history. At only 75 minutes (minus end credits) it moves along like a rocket & to be fair it never bored me although with such a short duration some of the exposition & set-up feels rushed. There is also one major time-travelling plot-hole, as Miller goes back in time to erase the T.E.C. agents from history they are seen to just disappear in the present of 2025 yet Chan & everyone else still have memories of them which if they never existed in the first place they wouldn't & rather contradictorily it's also specifically stated everything the erased agents did would now be undone.
The special effects look really cheap here, this is Playstation stuff with really bad CGI computer effects. The way the agents travel back in time is different than in the original too. Some of the period sets look good while other's look like cheap theme park recreations. The action scenes are alright but consist mainly of a few martial arts fights, there's no big action set-pieces which is a disappointment. The opening sequence set in Berlin features the most unconvincing Adolf Hitler impersonator ever, Jason Scott Lee himself could have done a better job. The opening text talks about time being 'breeched' which is just ridiculous since it should be spelt 'breached', the word breeched as it's spelt with two e's means put in trousers! I also love the scene in which three cops try to beat Chan up because he bumped into one & made him drop his doughnut!
The budget was probably fairly low but the production values are decent enough & it tries to vary it's location & point in time which gives it some variety. Shot in Los Angeles in California. The acting isn't anything special, Lee does alright & a bleached blonde Griffith is an OK villain.
Timecop: The Berlin Decision is a reasonable if unspectacular sequel to one of JCVD's best films & while it's not as good as the original it passes 75 odd minutes harmlessly enough & a fast paced story means you won't get bored or have to long to think about the plot-holes.
Directed by Steve Boyum this was a straight-to-video/DVD sequel to the rather good Jean-Claude Van Damme sci-fi action flick Timecop (1994) & a subsequent short-lived TV series of the same name which ran for a meagre nine episodes in 1997 before it was canned, while it's not a complete disaster & not as bad as I expected that's still no sort of recommendation & it's certainly nowhere near as good as the JCVD original. As the title suggest the films main plot revolves around an assassination attempt on Hilter in Berlin by a time-traveller which JCVD's replacement Jason Scott Lee has to foil & thus sets up the rest of the film. I did like the idea of the theme revolving around the moral questions about time-travel & whether it should be used to rectify past events like preventing the death's of eleven million innocent people as a result of Hitler & World War II rather than a plot that revolves around some bad guy wanting money &/or power. Unfortunately not much is made of this angle & Timecop: The Berlin Decision quickly descends into a series of cheap action set-pieces in which B-Movie action stars Griffith & Lee battle it out across various points in time as Chan has to defeat Miller & prevent him from killing his parents & thus erasing him from history. At only 75 minutes (minus end credits) it moves along like a rocket & to be fair it never bored me although with such a short duration some of the exposition & set-up feels rushed. There is also one major time-travelling plot-hole, as Miller goes back in time to erase the T.E.C. agents from history they are seen to just disappear in the present of 2025 yet Chan & everyone else still have memories of them which if they never existed in the first place they wouldn't & rather contradictorily it's also specifically stated everything the erased agents did would now be undone.
The special effects look really cheap here, this is Playstation stuff with really bad CGI computer effects. The way the agents travel back in time is different than in the original too. Some of the period sets look good while other's look like cheap theme park recreations. The action scenes are alright but consist mainly of a few martial arts fights, there's no big action set-pieces which is a disappointment. The opening sequence set in Berlin features the most unconvincing Adolf Hitler impersonator ever, Jason Scott Lee himself could have done a better job. The opening text talks about time being 'breeched' which is just ridiculous since it should be spelt 'breached', the word breeched as it's spelt with two e's means put in trousers! I also love the scene in which three cops try to beat Chan up because he bumped into one & made him drop his doughnut!
The budget was probably fairly low but the production values are decent enough & it tries to vary it's location & point in time which gives it some variety. Shot in Los Angeles in California. The acting isn't anything special, Lee does alright & a bleached blonde Griffith is an OK villain.
Timecop: The Berlin Decision is a reasonable if unspectacular sequel to one of JCVD's best films & while it's not as good as the original it passes 75 odd minutes harmlessly enough & a fast paced story means you won't get bored or have to long to think about the plot-holes.