This file was generated 2002-06-09 04:23 GMT. This movie's information hasn't changed since 2001-12-20.
I found myself stuck in front of the tube waiting one Friday night to see what HBO had to offer. Unfortunately, I found out, and it was The Glimmer Man. A few months later, I hosted a Bad Movie Night. Each of us brought a movie that the others hadn't seen but we had. We had to make some modifications to the list to keep the time reasonable, but we ended up with The Big Hit, No Escape, and this. In the context of the night, it was a clear winner, being bad enough to be entertaining without having any inherent entertainment value.
I suspect that one of the producers has a family member that works in the glass industry. Nothing else could explain the desire to have most fights involve breaking glass. The first standoff ends when someone is tackled and goes through a window. Other people are thrown through windows, decorative glass, and more glass. It's surprising that the scene in the church doesn't involve broken stained glass!
The story begins with some horrible murders that are either a twisted serial killer or a professional hit man using the ritual as a disguise. Either way, it's not very interesting. Some guy ( Bob Gunton looking too tame) is behind something. A local cop gets frustrated when a mystical new cop shows up to help on the case. We would devolve into a simple wunza plot (see Ebert's Little Movie Glossary), but we've got too much screen time devoted to poorly directed fights that the mystic one wins too easily. There's also the Russian Mafia thrown in for good measure, and even a government agent played by Brian Cox.
To give an idea of the holes that become obvious over the course of the movie, consider the title. Seagal's character is known as "the glimmer man" because his victims (during his special covert ops days) would see a glimmer, and then be dead. Nobody else would be around, which makes me wonder who hears about the glimmer to pass the nickname on.
Steven Seagal stinks up the screen with bad acting and mediocre fighting. Keenan Ivory Wayans could probably stand his own if he didn't also have to carry Seagal's non-acting. The script is largely to blame for this. Giving Seagal all of the funny lines and making Wayans the straight man is not good comedy!