‘Glimmer’ Goes on Shadowy Hunt for Killer

The origin of the title code name for Steven Seagal’s Jack Cole in “The Glimmer Man” refers to his stealth as a CIA agent in the jungles of Who Knows Where. His victims, we’re told, were lucky to get a glimmer of him before he was on top of them, doing Who Knows What.

Actually, glimmer, which means to emit a dim or intermittent light, is a more appropriate word for describing Seagal’s performance than his character’s cunning. What Cole’s victims got was not a glimmer of him, but a glimpse of him glimmering.

Anyway, none of that is in the movie (which opened Friday, unscreened for critics), except as background detail from Cole’s totally corrupt ex-CIA boss (Brian Cox) to the powerful American financier (Bob Gunton) he’s helping to buy chemical weapons from Russians to pass on to Serbian terrorists, apparently at a handsome markup. Only the glimmer man, now a bead- and Mao jacket-wearing, polylingual, Buddhist Los Angeles police detective, can stop him.

In a plot that makes no more sense than what you’ve read so far, Cole and his partner Jim Campbell (a manic Keenen Ivory Wayans) set out to find a serial killer who’s picking off random victims in their beds and hanging their bodies on the wall, crucifix-style. When Cole’s ex-wife is killed in that fashion, things don’t seem so random after all, and Cole--suspending his religious aversion to violence--is soon throat-cutting and karate-chopping his way through a thicket of Russian and CIA henchmen.

Seagal is light on his feet for such a wooden actor, but the fight sequences he choreographed for director John Gray (slumming here after some award-winning work for “Hallmark Hall of Fame”) are cheats. Most of the action scenes occur in the dark and are so heavily edited, it’s hard to know whose limbs and faces are being splintered by Cole.

Wayans does attempt to add some humor missing from most Seagal movies, but only if you think a recurring joke about a Chinese potion of powdered deer penis is funny can you expect more than a glimmer of comic relief.

* MPAA rating: R, for strong violence, language and some nudity. Times guidelines: routinely bloody action film violence.

‘The Glimmer Man’

Steven Seagal: Jack Cole

Keenen Ivory Wayans: Jim Campbell

Bob Gunton: Frank Deverell

Brian Cox: Mr. Smith

Michelle Johnson: Jessica Cole

A Seagal/Nasso production, released by Warner Bros. Director John Gray. Producers Steven Seagal, Julius R. Nasso. Executive producer Michael Rachmil. Screenplay by Kevin Brodbin. Cinematographer Rick Bota. Editor Donn Cambern. Costumes Luke Reichle. Music Trevor Rabin. Production design William Sandell. Art director Nancy Patton. Set decorator Ernie Bishop. Running time: 1 hour, 31 minutes.

* In general release throughout Southern California.