(Well, at least in how it relates to westerns.) .
Actions films do tend to reminisce of The Wild Bunch and its avant-garde presentation of western violence, but Timecop ubiquitously suggests other unmistakably western film themes. First, just to mention with respect to The Wild Bunch, Van Damme's character hunts down an ex-partner to bring him in (Pike and Duke.) But, stepping away from that particular film, the blatant allusion of the opening milieu (scene rhymed with screen and made the sentence sound funny): an establishing shot of an old snowy landscape with the year "1863- superimposed on the bottom of the screen. Men on horses enter from off left, moving towards the camera. Out of nowhere, they confront a rugged man with one tooth missing wearing a long dark coat. In a pugnacious tough guy dialogue exchange, he asks them to hand over the gold they are hauling. Viewing Time Cop, the audience thus far has been watching a classic western. This villain might as well have had a silent role and been placed in The Great Train Robbery, so immediately identifiably evil. However, the audience is expecting something unusual (probably asking why an old western robbery is taking place in an action movie,) and sure enough when conflict arises, the villain effortlessly annihilates the horsed men with a humungous futuristic gun and the audience is transported to modern day. This seems to be a significant theme of the movie--the "new western,"" evocative of the old, but with bigger guns, meaner villains, more violent deaths, some new ideas, a shift in setting and of course, cheesier dialogue. .
Jean-Claude Van Damme's cheesy bad-ass one-liners certainly allow him to live up to the reputation of the traditional western hero. The great John Ford himself claimed "-When a motion picture is at it s best it is long on action and short on dialogue.""- (qtd. in Libby 279) Keeping with tradition one should note just a few of Max Walker's (Van Damme s) responses: "Is this dangerous?- "I don't bake cookies for a living.
