The Glimmer Man is set in Los Angeles where ex New York Buddhist homicide detective Jack Cole (producer Steven Seagal) joins a task force lead by detective Jim Campbell (Keenan Ivory Wayans) who are hunting an active serial killer dubbed 'The Family Man' because of his ritualistic slaying's of entire families. The Family Man has killed eight families in six months & Campbell & Cole are told that he has struck again, two people in a seedy motel room bear all the hallmarks of the serial killer but super cop Cole knows that something is not right. As Campbell & Cole investigate the killings they find themselves under threat from from the Russian mafia, hit-men & the all round general scum of Los Angeles as they stumble across a plot in import chemical weapon's into the states...
Directed by John Gray one has to say that I like a good over-the-top Steven Seagal action flick, unfortunately The Glimmer Man is nothing like a good over-the-top Steven Seagal action flick. The script by Kevin Brodbin takes itself very seriously & one feels it tries to marry a dark serial killer thriller storyline not too dissimilar to the excellent Se7en (1995) which was a big box-office success the previous year together with the brutal violent action & martial arts of some of Seagal's previous better films like Out for Justice (1992), Under Siege (1992) it's sequel Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995) in particular which is an uneasy combination The Glimmer Man fails at spectacularly. The serial killer plot is there just for the hell of it & is totally abandoned by the halfway mark in favour of a buddy buddy mismatched partner cop action thriller like Lethal Weapon (1987), in fact The Glimmer Man feels like little bits & pieces, themes & ideas from various similar (much better) films all strung together in a rather lazy, routine & predictable narrative. As usual for Seagal there are some unintentionally funny scenes here the best being when Seagal's character is talking to a pathologist discussing a dead woman's body & Seagal proceeds to pick up a nearby scalpel, slice open the corpses breast & pull out a silicon implant so they can check the serial number on it! Yes, the scene really is as daft, dumb & silly as it sounds & that's not the only one. For instance when Campbell is hanging from the hotel window ledge at the end where did Seagal suddenly find all that professional abseiling gear to rescue him with?
Director Gray has to take a large chunk of responsibility here, the film drags badly especially at the start & it's surprisingly boring despite a few reasonable fight scenes. This is filmed in a functional if forgettable way & the constant gloomy whether & rain pouring from the sky is a direct & obvious rip-off from Se7en only it doesn't work here. In The Glimmer Man you can really see Seagal starting to put some weight on after having a string of financially successful flicks, maybe he became too complacent but as far as most people are concerned your only as good as your last film & it's this point Seagal's career took a nose-dive into the crapper to the point where he's staring these days in low budget action films opposite has-been rappers in Eastern Europeon countries. There are some trademark violent action scenes with Seagal slicing bad guy's throats with razor blades hidden in credit cards, breaking arms, shooting people to gain information, throwing them into steel posts, & generally causing lots of people lots of pain in a variety of entertaining ways. Unfortunately those scenes don't stop The Glimmer Man from being crap. There's an OK car crash sequence as a car crashes into a gas tanker conveniently parked diagonally across a road but a bit more could have been done with it & doesn't linger in the memory that long.
With a supposed budget of about $45,000,000 The Glimmer Man opened with under $8,000,000 & to very bad reviews. While I don't think The Glimmer Man lost much money I doubt it made much for Warner Bros. either which is why they probably went off Seagal a bit & only made two more films with him each one decreasing in budget. I have to mention Seagal's coat & Buddhist bead necklace here, it's awful & worth a few laughs all on it's own. I suspect Keenan Ivory Wayans was maybe trying to imitate his brother Damon Wayans who starred in a similar sort of action flick The Last Boy Scout (1991) along side Bruce Willis, the only difference being The Last Boy Scout is a terrific action film & The Glimmer Man isn't. As usual Seagal mumbles his way through the film & has become pretty lazy during the fight scenes not really moving or seemingly putting much effort into them.
The Glimmer Man is terrible, apart from one or two half decent & violent fight scenes this is just a jumbled mess of ideas stolen from better films. The Glimmer Man was the beginning of the end for Seagal in my opinion.
Directed by John Gray one has to say that I like a good over-the-top Steven Seagal action flick, unfortunately The Glimmer Man is nothing like a good over-the-top Steven Seagal action flick. The script by Kevin Brodbin takes itself very seriously & one feels it tries to marry a dark serial killer thriller storyline not too dissimilar to the excellent Se7en (1995) which was a big box-office success the previous year together with the brutal violent action & martial arts of some of Seagal's previous better films like Out for Justice (1992), Under Siege (1992) it's sequel Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995) in particular which is an uneasy combination The Glimmer Man fails at spectacularly. The serial killer plot is there just for the hell of it & is totally abandoned by the halfway mark in favour of a buddy buddy mismatched partner cop action thriller like Lethal Weapon (1987), in fact The Glimmer Man feels like little bits & pieces, themes & ideas from various similar (much better) films all strung together in a rather lazy, routine & predictable narrative. As usual for Seagal there are some unintentionally funny scenes here the best being when Seagal's character is talking to a pathologist discussing a dead woman's body & Seagal proceeds to pick up a nearby scalpel, slice open the corpses breast & pull out a silicon implant so they can check the serial number on it! Yes, the scene really is as daft, dumb & silly as it sounds & that's not the only one. For instance when Campbell is hanging from the hotel window ledge at the end where did Seagal suddenly find all that professional abseiling gear to rescue him with?
Director Gray has to take a large chunk of responsibility here, the film drags badly especially at the start & it's surprisingly boring despite a few reasonable fight scenes. This is filmed in a functional if forgettable way & the constant gloomy whether & rain pouring from the sky is a direct & obvious rip-off from Se7en only it doesn't work here. In The Glimmer Man you can really see Seagal starting to put some weight on after having a string of financially successful flicks, maybe he became too complacent but as far as most people are concerned your only as good as your last film & it's this point Seagal's career took a nose-dive into the crapper to the point where he's staring these days in low budget action films opposite has-been rappers in Eastern Europeon countries. There are some trademark violent action scenes with Seagal slicing bad guy's throats with razor blades hidden in credit cards, breaking arms, shooting people to gain information, throwing them into steel posts, & generally causing lots of people lots of pain in a variety of entertaining ways. Unfortunately those scenes don't stop The Glimmer Man from being crap. There's an OK car crash sequence as a car crashes into a gas tanker conveniently parked diagonally across a road but a bit more could have been done with it & doesn't linger in the memory that long.
With a supposed budget of about $45,000,000 The Glimmer Man opened with under $8,000,000 & to very bad reviews. While I don't think The Glimmer Man lost much money I doubt it made much for Warner Bros. either which is why they probably went off Seagal a bit & only made two more films with him each one decreasing in budget. I have to mention Seagal's coat & Buddhist bead necklace here, it's awful & worth a few laughs all on it's own. I suspect Keenan Ivory Wayans was maybe trying to imitate his brother Damon Wayans who starred in a similar sort of action flick The Last Boy Scout (1991) along side Bruce Willis, the only difference being The Last Boy Scout is a terrific action film & The Glimmer Man isn't. As usual Seagal mumbles his way through the film & has become pretty lazy during the fight scenes not really moving or seemingly putting much effort into them.
The Glimmer Man is terrible, apart from one or two half decent & violent fight scenes this is just a jumbled mess of ideas stolen from better films. The Glimmer Man was the beginning of the end for Seagal in my opinion.