THE SHADOW STRIKES (1937), INTERNATIONAL CRIME (1938)

PHENOMENALITY: (1) *uncanny,* (2) *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: (1) *adventure,* (2) drama
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*


Usually when a studio gets the rights to a serial property, the filmmakers use the first entry as a template for future entries, and only change the basic model for the hero's adventures over considerable time (if at all).  Grand National Pictures, the first film-studio ever to adapt the adventures of the pulp-magazine hero The Shadow, broke that particular mold.  After coming out with just one film showing their hero "Lamont Cranston" (or "Granston," depending on the film) as a costumed crimefighter, their very next entry in this "series" re-imagined the character as a completely down-to-earth crime reporter.

Directed by Lynn Shores (whose only other noteworthy film in my book is CHARLIE CHAN AT THE WAX MUSEUM), THE SHADOW STRIKES is adapted from a Maxwell Grant Shadow story.  Indeed, the credits for STRIKES make pointed reference to the Shadow's origins as a "Street and Smith" character, though no such reference appears in the subsequent picture.  The story is an undistinguished mystery in the vein of "Who Killed the Rich Guy This Time," with a subplot involving the heroic "Lamont Granston" looking for the murderers of his father. This is apparently this Shadow's motive for having become a crimefighter.  I gather that by the end of the story he found them, because at the close Granston's confidante/butler wonders whether or not the hero wishes to retire the Shadow costume.  Frankly, I was too bored to follow the plot that closely.

LaRoque, an actor with a long list of silent and sound credits-- none of which I've seen-- acquits himself reasonably well in the Granston role, but Shadow fans then were surely disappointed that he only changed into a Shadow-like outfit twice in the film, and only very briefly.  When he first appears in a darkened room and gets the drop on a couple of crooks, he's wearing only a black hat and a black cloak, with nothing whatever to guard his face.  Author William Gibson detailed all sorts of illusionistic devices that the prose Shadow used to make it seem as if he disappeared before his opponents' eyes.  The Grand National Shadow looks like he could be exposed by shining a flashlight in his face.

INTERNATIONAL CRIME is a very different kettle of warmed-over mystery cliches.  The mystery itself isn't much more interesting, but the actors have better lines and the direction by Charles Lamont (best known for his eight 1950s Abbott and Costello films) is much more energetic.  IMDB asserts that this story too is based on a Shadow prose tale but the credits don't go out of their way to advertise the source.

This time Lamont Cranston is a crime reporter with both a radio show and a newspaper column that go under the rubric "The Shadow Says."  As Shadow-philes know, the prose hero evolved out of a host-character who narrated crime-stories on the radio, so making the Shadow a radio-reporter at least keeps him close to his parent medium.  Curiously, though this protagonist never assumes any sort of costume, nor does he perform any Shadow-style illusions, a headshot of the Street & Smith "Shadow" appears both as a logo above Cranston's print column and in a picture on Cranston's wall.  There are occasional uses of catch-phrases from the Shadow radio-show, like "the Shadow knows" and "crime does not pay." Cranston also has two assistants reminiscent of the print-Shadow's network of operatives: taxi-driver Moe ("Moe Shrevnitz" in the pulps) and female reporter Phoebe Lane (very loosely based on "Margo Lane," conceived for the Shadow radio series in 1937).  However, whereas Moe is largely indistinguishable from his model, Phoebe Lane's character follows the pattern of the "would-be female sleuth," and is played for comedy rather than as a valuable asset.  The comedy elements in this film are its most appealing aspects: the hero seems to spend more time tweaking the noses of the dopey cops than he does ferreting out the international criminals of the title.

IMDB notes that two different production companies assembled these disparate entries, both of which were released by Grand National, so that may explain the extreme dissonance between the two LaRoque Shadows.  By my lights, despite the use of the name "the Shadow," INTERNATIONAL CRIME doesn't belong in any compendium of metaphenomenal films.  It doesn't even invoke the same "outre outfits" trope seen in STRIKES in any more naturalistic context. 

The two films also diverge in terms of the Fryean mythoi I've assigned them.  Admittedly, both films are simple mysteries at heart, but STRIKES does try, however badly, to have a larger-than-life crimefighter solve the mystery, while in CRIME the ace reporter is distinctly life-size, and therefore fits the mythos of drama-- or more specifically, "melodrama."
   

BLACK PANTHER (2009)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*

The DVD collection of the short-lived BLACK PANTHER teleseries-- produced in concert between Marvel Productions and the BET channel--  accurately adapts Reginald Hudlin's graphic novel (a collection of the first six issues of volume four of the BP feature).  It's watchable but not especially compelling.

Given that the animation takes the "motion comic" approach, the chief virtue of the visuals is that they mirror the strength of the pencilwork of comics-artist John Romita Jr.  Hudlin is credited with the adaptation of his comics-script, although he adds a few elements not present in the original GN, such as a guest appearance by the superheroine Storm (whom the Black Panther later married in Marvel comics-continuity).

The greatest strength of the Hudlin comic-turned-teleseries is its attempt, however imperfect, to center the fantastic cosmos of the heroic Panther and his wondrous African realm Wakanda within the sphere of real-world political concerns.  The original Black Panther backstory created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in the 1960s, while admirable on many levels, essentially rewrites innumerable Tarzan film-tales in which the ape-man repels invaders from his pristine African paradise.  Lee and Kirby's main innovation was to posit a black hero being every bit as heroic against invaders as Tarzan and his many jungle-kindred.

Hudlin, in part following the lead of other raconteurs  who followed in the footsteps of Lee and Kirby, re-imagines Wakanda as a realm apart from the dirty politics governing the rest of the world, including the borderline-corrupt United States of America.  At one point a Wakandan emissary deprecates most of the rest of the world for its lack of "spirituality," implicitly in comparison to Wakanda itself.  Hudlin never really defines that alleged spirituality, though: rather, Wakanda's main strength is its ability to repel the attacks of the modern mechanized world.  It's a badass version of Shangri-La.

Some reviewers complained that the series was too overburdened with references to Marvel continuity, particularly with a wide number of characters borrowed or modified from Marvel Universe comics.  I wouldn't mind seeing a Panther divorced of his Marvel origins but there's nothing intrinsically wrong with one intimately tied to the rest of Marvel (and there was no way Marvel was going to promote anything else, of course).  On occasion it's interesting to see certain figures, like Captain America, interpreted through a lens of political oppositionalism.

In any case, the plot's pretty straightforward: various Marvel villains-- the Juggernaut, Batroc, the Radioactive Man-- are organized to attack Wakanda by the Black Panther's foremost villain, Ulysses Klaw.  Klaw is given a more ideological slant here-- he's the descendant of a colonial family that helped found South Africa (which to say, an instant and unqualified villain in this ideology).  The Panther and his aides find various ways to stop the villains and even manage to send the United States packing from an ill-advised attempt at intervention.

It's all very ideologically fulfilling, but its chief fault is not the intrusion of Marvel characters.  Rather, in contrast to the many-faceted character of the Black Panther as presented by Lee, Kirby, and many other Marvel creators, Hudlin's Panther is just like his country: a tough badass-- and nothing more.  This Panther touches all the "right" bases-- he's respectful to his mother, he tells an awestruck young kid that he's just a man, not a god.  But it's weak tea next to the more nuanced portraits of Don McGregor and Christopher Priest.

Apart from some nice voice work-- though not by Stan Lee, who has an absolutely HORRIBLE bit part-- there's nothing here that isn't seen to better effect in the GN.
   

THE MUMMY'S CURSE (1944)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical*

The Universal horror film THE MUMMY (1932) is one of a very small number of films whose mythicity I'd rate as "excellent" rather than "good" (the highest rating accorded any film thus far reviewed here).  None of the 1940s Universal "Mummy" films, indirectly spawned by the 1932 work, come anywhere close to that level, but they're always enjoyable time-wasters.

Probably the best way to review this series would be to start from the first one, but as it happens, I saw this one broadcast the other day.  Much of the storyline is a reprise of the previous entry in the series, THE MUMMY'S GHOST, although with a major location-change.  At the end of GHOST, the indestructible mummy Kharis walks into a Massachusetts swamp with a young woman, the reincarnation of the princess he loved in ancient Egyptian times.  At the start of CURSE, Kharis (once again played by Lon Chaney Jr.)-- and somewhat later, the reincarnated Princess Ananka-- unaccountably arise from a swamp in Lousiana.  Fortunately for the mummy, two Egyptian priests, wise in the ways of keeping mummies alive, happen to be on the scene, and they spirit Kharis away to a local tomb while they seek-- for reasons left vague-- to reunite him with his lost princess.

If one gets past the absudity of these pagan priests chasing mummies around Louisiana, a number of good set-pieces provide small blessings to CURSE.

Kharis, as is typical in these '40s mummyfilms, is unable to speak and his actions are generally limited to strangling offenders with his one good hand.  Several times in CURSE his victims practically have to walk into his grasp because the mummy moves so slowly.  However, there's one creepy death where he murders an old woman by coming at her from behind, an approach which renders his death-dealing more credible.  In addition this film ends with a show-stopping moment in which Kharis literally brings down the house-- or rather, the tomb-- as he tears through stone and metal to reach one of his intended victims.

In GHOST John Carradine essayed a repressed Egyptian priest who compromised his duties to Kharis with his lusts for a young female, while his perceptor (George Zucco) remained back in Egypt.  This time both priests are on hand for the action: dutiful older priest Ilzor (Peter Coe) and lustful younger priest Ragheb (Martin Kosleck, who gives the most enjoyable performance).  Virginia Christine, portraying the amnesiac young woman who was Princess Ananka in a past life, also arouses sympathy for her doomed situation, in marked contrast to the predictable figures of the requisite handsome guy and pretty girl (Dennis Moore & Kay Harding).  Moore does have two lively hand-to-hand fights with Kosleck, though, before Kharis interrupts.

Considering that most of the films directed by Leslie Goodwins were comedies, he handles both the action scenes and the creepy moments quite well.  The reincarnation theme, which provides so much metaphysical symbolism in the 1932 Karloff film, is reduced to a gimmick to motivate the mummy and his priests.  The most interesting thing about CURSE, like GHOST, is how oddly evocative it seems to see a mummy-- an entity that would never be possible save in an arid environment like Egypt-- rise from a swamp, which seems the closest thing possible to a midway point between earth and water. 

I AM NUMBER FOUR (2011)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical, psychological*




I've not read the "Lorien Legacies" books that spawned this Dreamworks picture (first to be distributed by Disney's Touchstone-- cue "strange bedfellows" maxim), but I'm guessing from what I've read elsewhere that the film probably does the original justice.  FOUR is not a particularly inventive picture, following in the wake of many many teen-centered stories about young people trying to pass in ordinary societies despite possessing extraordinary powers

However, it does have one strength: it picks one simple story and follows it through with a minimum of complication.  This puts it ahead of other "power-teen" films in which the scenarios attempt to out-X the X-men in terms of dizzying continuities, as with (for example) 2008's JUMPER and 2009's PUSH.

The hero is the son of alien parents, both of whom have died, and his only parental figure is another alien who attempts to keep him safe, concealing him amid the humans of Earth, whom they both fortunately resemble.  Unfortunately, the young man has certain powers-- termed "legacies" to make them sound less like superhero attributes-- that are blossoming with his adolescence. At the picture's start, he blows his last Earth-cover-ID by letting other teens witness his abilities, so the guardian has to set his young charge up in another location.  The bulk of the story then follows young "John Smith" (the alien teen's choice for a new name) as he and guardian "Henri" try to keep low and avoid a hostile group of alien bounty hunters, the Mogadorians.

Naturally, the first thing John Smith does in his new locale is to butt heads with the local bullies and get cozy with a nosy Earth-girl-- one given to posting scandalous news on her website.  John also meets and befriends a young nerd named Sam who believes-- correctly, as it turns out-- that his father was kidnapped by aliens.  Sam gets the best line in the film: "My life is an episode of the X-Files."  John's carelessness brings down the wrath of the bounty hunters.  Henri dies but John meets another of his kind who in effect takes Henri's place: a young kick-ass female who calls herself "Number Six."  The teens trounce their attackers in some strong FX-scenes that, compared to other films in this subgenre, are relatively easy to follow.  John, expecting trouble to find him again, leaves his girlfriend and hits the road once more, this time with both Sam and Number Six in tow, thus leaving open the possibility of Sam locating his lost dad.

Given that this is all very well-traveled material, there might have been a justifiable temptation to camp it up.  Thankfully, the four principal actors all play it straight, and the script, while never provocative, supplies good bits of business for them.  Teresa Palmer as Number Six shows an intensity that's preferable to John Smith's maunderings.  It might have been a more inventive story had it been built around her, but the filmmakers did reasonably well with what they had.

. 

ELEPHANT STAMPEDE (1951), AFRICAN TREASURE (1952)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*

Following the relative upswing of the fourth and fifth Bomba films, numbers six and seven dip back down to an amiable inconsequentiality.  They excel only in terms of giving Bomba two gorgeous female leads-- Donna Martell and Laurette Luez-- in place of the "pretty" types that had dominated the series (Peggy Ann Garner, Sue England).  ELEPHANT STAMPEDGE also revives a support-character from the first film, Commissioner Andy Barnes, who would remain with the series, albeit played by Leonard Mudie in place of Charles Irwin.

As one might guess from the title, this time Bomba's out to save the elephants in ELEPHANT STAMPEDE, with ivory poachers as the predictable villains.  The one thing that sparks the conflict is the presence of Donna Martell's sarong-clad Lola, and a slight alteration of Bomba's attitude toward the ladies. In BOMBA ON PANTHER ISLAND the hero seems quite conscious of his effect on two young ladies, and he seems to enjoy the attention.  Here, he befriends Lola, who's been schooled in the white man's ways, but all he seems to want from her is for her to teach him the skill of reading white man's writing (though he never says what's made him so hot for books).  The hero studiously ignores all of Lola's overtures to make out, until Lola gets the idea of making him jealous by playing up to a visiting white hunter-- who, as it happens, turns out to be one of the ivory poachers.  Bomba does evince a moment of possible jealousy, which suggests that he's not as immune to Lola's charms as he pretends.  Once the action gets started, though, matters of love are forgotten, and the film once again ends with him fading into the jungle, no committments made.

On a minor negative note, though up to this point the Bomba series hasn't been egregious in its portrayal of black natives, STAMPEDE does start out with what some might deem an objectionable picture of black tribesmen treated as children by their own chief, as he insists that their own future depends on learning the white man's culture.

TREASURE has the simplest plot of any Bomba films so far. As in earlier features, we have nefarious nogoodniks-- diamond smugglers-- masquerading as legitimate hunters as they venture into Bomba's neck of the woods.  They enslave local workers to dig diamonds out of an extinct volcano, including the father of Lita (Luez).  Lita importunes "jungle devil" Bomba to free the workers and conquer the villains, and after assorted unmemorable thrills and spills, he does so.  There's no hint of romance between the hero and the female lead this time, and the only thing that struck me about the film was that after seven film adventures, visitors to Bomba's territory still doubt his existence until they see him in person.  I could be wrong, but it seems that by the time Tarzan had racked up seven sound-film adventures, pretty much everyone who visits Africa expects to encounter the "ape-man.". 

GREEN LANTERN (2011)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, metaphysical*

When it's good, GREEN LANTERN is a dazzling rock'em, sock'em space opera that's true to the Silver Age comic series.

When it's bad, GREEN LANTERN is a minefield full of what Harold Bloom might call its "anxieties of influence."  Those anxieties include not only GL's relationship to other popular films, superhero and otherwise, but also to many of the influence-anxieties spawned by the many raconteurs who have worked on the comic book.

My initial viewing of GREEN LANTERN in the theater was relatively positive, so I was surprised to see such vehement dislike for the film, especially on fan-forums.  I decided to wait on reviewing it until I could find time to screen it on DVD.

The film's biggest problem is the hero himself.  The original Silver Age hero was largely a flat character with a few interesting "tics" (daredevil pilot, charmer with the ladies).  Over time, in response to greater demands for detailed characterization, Hal Jordan was eventually supplied with a backstory about a pilot father who died tragically.  The 2011 film takes this daddy-issue anxiety and essentially re-interprets the Green Lantern mythos in almost Freudian terms.  Not a half-hour of the film goes by that doesn't have someone fearing the loss of a father or mentor, fearing their lack of approval, or even-- in the case of subsidiary villain Hector Hammond-- hitching his star to an evil alien "god" who turns out to be a Satanic "devouring daddy."

Overt psychologizing should generally be approached with a light touch in superhero fiction.  It worked well enough in Geoff Johns' GREEN LANTERN: REBIRTH graphic novel, which in 2004 resuscitated the hero from a long period of over-involved continuity escapades (none of which are relevant here, except to note that Johns' star was so elevated by REBIRTH that it's reported he became an adviser on the film-script).  Similarly, the script for Sam Raimi's 2002 SPIDER-MAN made light use of the psychological idea of "sibling rivalry," briefly portraying Harry Osborn's frustation when his overbearing father Norman dismisses Harry and focuses his paternal approval on a young man, Peter Parker, to whom Osborn's not even related.

The film, unfortunately, does not take such a light touch.  Its Hal Jordan (essayed competently but not quite persuasively by Ryan Reynolds) is a self-absorbed "danger junkie" whose latent daddy issues mark him as closer to the "child-men" of Judd Apatow comedies than to any heroic archetype.  His relatives and his ex-girlfriend/boss Carol all worry about him incessantly: why can't Hal straighten up and fly right?  Carol even explicitly calls him a child, and the script's attempts to make Hal sympathetic through reference to his trauma at witnessing his dad's death don't pan out. 

Despite all this, the film tells us (even though Hal himself takes a overly long time to believe it) that Hal has the Right Stuff.  An introductory montage explains the origins of the Guardians of the Universe and their purpose to maintain order with the Green Lantern corps, who fight evil using power rings filled with the "green power" of the will.  However, in the film's metaphysical rewriting of the original comics-mythos, "green power" is opposed by the "yellow power" of fear, which saps the will and leaves one unable to function.  And just as the Lanterns incarnate the positive green power, a colossal entity named Parallax incarnates the power of fear.  It's eventually revealed that Parallax is a mutated Guardian who had the foolhardiness to break into a "forbidden chamber" with the idea of mastering the yellow power; instead, it mastered and corrupted him.

An outstanding Green Lantern named Abin Sur-- mentor to a younger Lantern, name of Sinestro-- manages to confine Parallax temporarily within a star-sector, but the monstrous creature begins to break free.  Abin Sur escapes but is struck by a poisonous yellow effluvium from Parallax.  Dying, he plummets to Earth and commands the ring to seek out "one without fear": Hal Jordan. 

Back in space, the Green Lanterns, having failed to keep Parallax confined, still find the time to summon their new appointee to the Guardians' planet to apprise him of his duties and give him some bootcamp-style training.  Sinestro-- whom comics-readers know as GL's perennial villain-- is a good guy at this point, but disdainful of his mentor's selection, for Sinestro senses the new hero's latent fears and goes out of his way to discourage Hal.  In a move that doesn't inspire the viewer with much confidence in the protagonist, Hal does temporarily give up and go back to Earth.  For some reason he's allowed to keep the ring and power battery, which comes in handy when he changes his mind in time to save Carol from danger.

Elsewhere on Earth, xenobiologist Hector Hammond assumes a role rather like that of Harry Osborn in the SPIDER-MAN films, in that Hector has a senator-father who treats his son like a loser.  To complete the Norman Osborn trope, the senator also extolls Hal over his son--in Hector's presence-- in no uncertain terms: "There are thinkers and there are doers, and you're a doer!"  To be sure, Hal himself arouses envy in Hector, in that Hector was in love with Carol but lost out to Jordan.  (Possibly the writers were building on the first comic-book Hammond tale, in which Hector competes with Jordan for Carol's affections.)  But surely it's Hec's "bad dad" who is most responsible for his son's travails: the senator uses his influence to have Hector assigned to examine the corpse of Abin Sur.  The yellow effluvia infects the scientist, who becomes a big-brained mutant with mental powers (a somewhat more grotesque rendering of the comics-villain).  He sells out body, soul and planet to aid Parallax-- whose first target, on escaping confinement, happens to be Earth.

In our Freudianized culture there's been so much emphasis of father-trauma that it is hard to do anything original with the trope, especially in a superhero adventure.  Still, the confrontation of Hector and Hal plays out as overly artificial.  In their second squaring-off, Hector captures Carol in order to neutralize the hero's ability to strike back. "I Ioved her from the moment I first saw her," says Hector. "But she could never see me, as you were always standing in the way."  Hal, having tried and failed to convince the enthralled scientist that they're both brothers under the skin ("I know what it's like to be afraid"), offers Hector a new temptation: to "be like me," implicitly to give himself an ultimate makeover if he'll trade Carol's life for the power ring.  (As a side-note, in the comics Hector Hammond was the first villain to ever gain control of GL's power ring, albeit temporarily.)  Fortunately GL's will proves superior and he orders the ring to vanquish the demented scientist.  A few moments later, Hector is killed when Parallax devours him for having "failed me".  Poor Hec; just couldn't stay away from demanding father-figures.

On top of all this father-anxiety and devilish temptation, at one point the Guardians themselves are tempted to follow the lead of Parallax: to tap into the yellow power in order to defeat Parallax.  Sinestro, mentor of the Green Lantern who first confined the fear-demon, yields to temptation as well, advocating use of the yellow power.  Green Lantern manages to talk the Guardians out of using the weapons of the enemy against the enemy, but then-- for reasons that weren't all that clear to me-- he's left to defend his planet from Parallax alone.  When Hal triumphs, the script repeatedly emphasizes that he does so not because he was free from fear, but because he manages to conquer his fears with his will.  Ironically, in a coda during the credits, it will be Sinestro-- who boasted of his freedom from mortal fear-- who goes against the Guardians and dons a ring of yellow, foreshadowing his conversion to outright villainy for purposes of a sequel.

As I said at the review's beginning, GREEN LANTERN is not a bad film in the least, but it may have been a mistake to rethink the concept in such strikingly Oedipal terms-- at least, if the scripters could only handle such issues in pedestrian fashion.  With SPIDER-MAN, the emphasis on good and bad fathers appears in that character's mythos from Story One.  But GREEN LANTERN in its conception had a more abstract appeal.  Temptation is a strong theme from the Silver Age stories, which moderns like Geoff Johns have elaborated into a complex comic-book mythology.  But Freud's "family romance" seems to have very little relevance to the Green Lantern mythology, and many of the film's overblown pronouncements on the nature of fear come off as mere truisms.

Nevertheless, the CGI here gave us a great-looking film, and was surely the only method by which the spectacular effects of the power ring could ever be rendered in live-action.  Rumor has it that a sequel will be made, if only because it'll be less expensive now that the CGI-programs have already been written.  I hope it comes to pass, for now that the producers have got viewers over the hump of "the origin," they may be really be able to cut loose in Part 2.   

TIMECOP (1994)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*


The thing that bothered me most about TIMECOP was probably one of the things the producers considered a virtue: the film's attempt to get star Jean-Claude Van Damme to play a character with more on his mind than beating people up.

A lot of the action-stars who gained fame in the 1970s and 1980s-- Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Seagal-- have received merciless mockery for their supposed lack of acting skills.  While it's true that all three had very limited ranges, they could and did act quite well within those ranges.

The problem with TIMECOP is that unlike those actors, JCVD was really incapable of putting even basic feeling into the already broad emotional scenes of an action-movie.  In my final analysis, I found myself wishing to see JCVD in a more superficial film like KICKBOXER (1989) or DEATH WARRANT (1990), where he really was good at just one thing: beating up bad guys.

In this movie JCVD plays Walker, who starts the movie as a regular cop. His wife and unborn son are killed by mysterious marauders.  Years later, science perfects the process of time-travel to the past, and the bereaved policeman becomes a member of TEC (Time Enforcement Commission), set to regulate those who attempt to loot the past of its treasures or to change history.

To his good fortune, Walker encounters an aspiring presidential candidate, one McComb (Ron Silver), who wants to shut down the TEC.  Walker does some digging and soon finds out that not only does the politician want to plunder the past himself, he's responsible for killing Walker's wife and son.  Walker, armed with greater knowledge as to the origins of his tragedy, goes back in time both to avert his family's deaths and to bring righteous judgment down on McComb and his underlings.

Director Peter Hyams directs a lively action-opus here, with Mark Verheiden, the writer of the original Timecop feature at Dark Horse Comics, working as one of the film's writers.  Hyams does, however, lean heavily on the action-genre's penchant for filling a movie with many set-pieces that don't always line up well.  A particular example is that though Walker begins his time-jaunts in a spiffy-looking "time-ship," said ship is never with him whenever he materializes in the past.  Ron Silver is one of the film's main strengths, playing a politician so disgusting and oily that one can usually overlook the hero's floudering attempts at emoting.

The theme here is a pretty simple sociological one, with McComb's attempt to shut down the TEC functioning as a fantasy-world analogue to such real-world politics as the Reagan Administration's gutting of the EPA in the 1980s: the main difference being that Reagan did it to please assorted corporate powers while McComb just wants to fund his own presidential campaign.

At one point McComb even says something like, "We're going to bring back the worst excesses of the eighties!"

If he'd had a time-machine to access the future and see how much worse it could be, he'd probably have been embarassed to make such a puny threat.