A fateful decision made on a routine mission to protect history from being changed leads timecop Ryan Chang (Lee) on a disorienting race through time to stop a madman.
Low budget sequels to big budget movies minus the original star rarely deserve much attention and Timecop 2: The Berlin Decision is rare indeed. The film smartly delves into the paradoxes of time travel and the morality of altering it for the better while effectively traipsing through multiple time periods and tossing in liberal amounts of martial arts action refreshingly devoid of overblown wire fu. Underrated Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story star Jason Scott Lee steps in to replace Jean-Claude Van Damme in his first major martial arts role since and comes out a winner.
Timecop 2 is the sort of action film that demands your undivided attention for fear of getting confused, but it’s worth the effort. Like the original Timecop, the film takes place in the not so distant future where time travel is not only possible, but requires policing in order to keep criminals from altering it. Jason Scott Lee plays Ryan Chang, a member of a small force of timecops charged with this task whose mission becomes blurred when Brandon Miller (Thomas Ian Griffith), a fellow timecop, attempts to assassinate Hitler before World War II breaks out. Chang thwarts the attempt and Miller is locked away, but he escapes into the time continuum and begins killing off descendents of each of the timecops so that he can right the wrongs of history unimpeded. As Chang races through time period after time period to stop Miller from erasing him and his associates from history, he witnesses the future slowly changing around him while his own ideals are tested by the opportunity to go back and keep his father from dying at the hands of a killer.
As one who has been long fascinated by time travel, I found this film’s story to be quite enjoyable and challenging. Given some thought, most people would likely wish they could go back in time to change something, whether a personal loss or a global catastrophe. Of course in theory, even the smallest alteration of time could cause drastic change for the worse as explored in Ray Bradbury’s 1952 short story A Sound of Thunder, where the crushing of a single butterfly by time-traveling dinosaur hunters in prehistoric time creates a significant ripple effect through time. Timecop 2 deals with all of these issues by pitting Lee against a man whose only ambition is to stop history’s great blunders before they happen, while his initial efforts only cause other calamities that the film hints at.
Jason Scott Lee proves to be cut from the stuff that action heroes are made out of. With ample charm, looks, and solid screen fighting skills picked up since training for his 1993 Bruce Lee biopic it makes you wonder why he hasn’t been starring in blockbuster Hollywood actioners ever since. Alright, Hollywood has problems with ethnicity, but I’ll reserve that topic for editorial rants. It’s still impossible not to face the issue when he’s dropped into the old west or 1930s Berlin, but the script handles it well while Jason brings welcome humanity to his role. Griffith makes a great foil reminiscent of Rutger Hauer in the 80s, but with tae kwon do skills replacing inherent malice.
No one should come away from this film wowed by the martial arts action, but it is very competently choreographed by expert Jeet Kune Do practitioners Jerry and Fran Poteet. Jerry was one of Bruce Lee’s students and previously worked with Jason on Dragon and Soldier. In keeping with the art’s pragmatic approach towards confrontations, the action is reasonably grounded in reality yet still packs a punch. A prison riot midway through that Jason is ‘warped’ into provides some of the best action. The finale between Jason and Griffith doesn’t hold up so well in comparison to Hong Kong’s better standards, but the wind-up leading to it and the subsequent cerebral sparring gives the tussle meaning.
Timecop 2 is not without more prominent flaws. Budget limitations keep the period settings claustrophobic and occasionally unconvincing as in the poor Hitler double. The central use of paradoxes and theories relating to time travel on the one hand result in cause and effects disappointingly small in scale, while conversely they can become bewildering for the viewer as reality unravels around the main character. This film could have easily been a lot worse given the heavily-tapped time travel theme and its many pitfalls as a plot device. Yet the filmmakers and cast seem to have made the best of it. Ultimately, the film effectively balances out an intriguing sci-fi premise with solid martial arts action while providing Jason Scott Lee an opportunity to strut his stuff.
by Mark Pollard
