Stream The Coolest Time Travel Movie Absolutely Free

By Chris Snellgrove
| Updated 1 hour ago

For sci-fi fans, there is perhaps no trope more common than time travel. From Star Trek to Back to the Futurewe are used to our favorite heroes and villains dashing through time to either save or threaten everything that has been or will be. This has naturally led to arguments from fans about which film made the best use of this trope, but those arguments are unnecessary because the answer has been staring us in the face for over 30 years. Simply put, Timecop is the coolest time travel movie ever made, and you can now stream it for free on Tubi.

Timecop Rules

Timecop (adapted from the Mike Richardson and Mark Verheiden story of the same name published by Dark Horse Comics) centers on a government agency charged with stopping crimes involving time travel. Once a cop, Agent Max Walker is caught up in a time warp story involving a senator abusing time travel in order to fund his presidential ambitions. After that senator takes out Biff Tannen and successfully changes the future in his favor, Walker will need all of his skills and knowledge to save more than the world…he has to save history itself.

Great performances are a cornerstone Timecop…Ron Silver (best known for his Emmy-nominated role in The West Wing) played the sly senator out to manipulate the timeline. Meanwhile, Mia Sara (best known for playing the title character’s love interest in Ferris Bueller’s day off) plays Max Walker’s wife. Finally, Walker is played by a martial arts movie maestro Jean-Claude Van Dammewhose unique brand of chutzpah action-schlock transforms Timecop into something strange almost transcendent.

Fortunately, general audiences did not find the Timecop too strange once it was shown for the first time. The film went on to earn $101.6 million against a budget of $27 million. While not exactly a smash hit, the film earned enough to spawn a short-lived ABC television adaptation in 1997. We eventually got a direct-to-video film sequel in 2003, though neither the sequel nor the TV series featured Van Damme back. .

The original Timecop it may have impressed the box office, but it didn’t exactly impress the critics. Ar Rotten tomatoesthis film has a critical score of 42 percent. In general, critics recognized that the film would appeal to her sci-fi fans who were able to suspend their disbelief and not ask too many questions about time travel. However, critics generally agreed that the film lacked many cinematic time travel classics such as James Cameron’s The Terminator.

Watch Timecop

So, a moment of truth: why the heck I recommend you watch Timecopa critically panned sci-fi film whose pop culture footprint can be measured in crappy sequels? First of all, despite the snooty of critics who have historically denigrated science fiction, this film’s time travel plot is clever and compelling. Her vision of how humans would inevitably abuse temporal mechanics for wealth and power is at once understandable and creative, and the film as a whole. indeed lives up to all its bonkers premise.

Mainly, though, this film is worth watching for Jean-Claude Van Damme, who previously starred in action film classics such as Blood sport, A kickboxera General Soldier. He’s not the most emotional or expressive actor, but he makes up for it with a raw physicality that transforms what could be de rigueur movie fights into beautiful displays of actual fighting prowess. Van Damme has always been a standout in his own right thanks to his martial arts skills, and in the high-tech world of Timecop, his brand of killer kung-fu stands out that much more thanks to his gorgeous execution of precision but low technology.

Will you enjoy Timecop as much as I did, or will you want to travel back in time and warn your slightly younger self to never watch it in the first place? You won’t know until you experience the shocking intersection of action and ambitious science fiction for yourself. And if you end up traveling back in time, don’t forget that touching your own past will kill you both, so be ok be careful when you slap that remote away.

Timecop available to stream for free is Tubi.