Wednesday, March 13, 2013

A Scene Of Setup

When I was a boy, my friend and I tried to see "Timecop" at the local mall's theater. As the film was rated R, we were perhaps eleven or twelve years old and the box office employee was inexplicably diligent about his job, we were denied. Because we were dumb, we bought tickets to see "Little Giants" and we saw "Little Giants". Not until years later did it occur to me that we probably could have seen what we wanted anyway, and not until years later did I see "Timecop".

It's a fine film if one is naturally disposed favorably towards films featuring the likes of Jean-Claude Van Damme, Ron Silver and Mia Sara. Silver, playing a villainous senator, plans to enrich himself by using time travel unethically. Van Damme, the titular timecop, must stop him. Now, a film like this necessarily has a lot of exposition to get out, and "Timecop" does it largely in one single scene. It's the second one in the film.

A group of big, important men meet in our nation's capital. Before the meeting starts, none of them save one knows anything about time travel or this grand plot of evil. The scene transpires over the course of a couple minutes, and by the time it's over, everyone is agreed that time travel is possible, that it's happened and that it has certain rules. They are also in agreement that someone's done it for nefarious purposes.

Moreover, they resolve to form a special unit whose purpose is policing time travel and combatting the aforementioned threat and appoint a Washington police official who happens to be there. This all happens in a few minutes of some politicians and military men meeting. The scene (and the movie as a consequence) delights me because of what an astonishingly fast pace the critical information of the movie is laid out in. Rampant time travel isn't as implausible as a meeting that eventful and productive, but it had to be in order to set up the fun parts of the movie quickly. I love that.

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