The Glimmer Man Reviews

Less an actor than an implacable club with which the less evolved among us imagine beating our enemies, Steven Seagal tries to break free of his designated audience with this hybrid buddy cop/serial killer/conspiracy movie mess. Co-star Keenen Ivory Wayans appears to be paying for some unspecified mortal sin in his role as Seagal's partner. The comedy is cruelly subliterate (powdered deer privates figure prominently), the action -- performed by an aging, dumpy Seagal -- pointless, and the story pieced together from moldy cliches. The formula for the brain-drainers that keep Seagal in life's little luxuries is simple and, in the end, hellishly dull: He beats everyone he meets into a pulp, never sustaining so much as a scratch. What's at stake? Only our dubious fondness for watching some wall of meat pound rude people and evildoers into pulps for the sheer idiotic thrill of it.