I don’t know why I’m surprised, but I found Glimmer Man, starring Steven Seagal, Keenan Ivory Wayans and Brian Cox, to be a pretty dumb movie, but not in the ways I thought it would be. Knowing only that Wayans was in the movie with Seagal, I assumed that the Wayans Brother would be cracking jokes and be generally annoying throughout the movie. Instead, it turned out that he was pretty badass and Seagal was the annoying one. As you might expect, he gets his occasional quips out there which are pretty par for the course, but he’s just such a jackass throughout the movie. Okay, it’s kind of funny when he gets Wayans to take some petrified deer penis, but later after Wayans’ house catches on fire, he just relentlessly gives his partner–who, mind you, is risking his job just being seen with him–shit. Non stop. I wanted to punch him, but was worried he’d punch me back. Through the TV. Or something.

Speaking of punching, the highlights of the movie are obviously the fight scenes. The movie came back in 1996 so it could be argued that Seagal was still in his ass-kicking prime (or just on the waning edge of it). On the surface they’re pretty good, but if you put them under a little bit of scrutiny you soon realize that the timing on events doesn’t seem right nor do the actions make much sense. Basically, what I’m saying as that the fight choreography for about half the fight scenes isn’t so good. Hell, some of them make Seagal seem like even more of a dick, like when he needlessly fights Cox’s goons in a restaurant, causing thousands of dollars in damages to plates, tables and chairs. he could have just taken it outside!

I will give the movie a few points for having a somewhat original plot. See, Seagal and Wayans are hunting down a serial killer, but the signs start pointing towards Seagal who has a mysterious past. It seems unlikely that he’s a killer who has lied his way into the LA police department, but that doubt is still there. For about 5 minutes, because they cut the legs out from under that suspicion pretty unceremoniously.

The only reason I watched this one tonight was because it’s slated for removal from Instant Netflix soon. I probably should have just deleted it because, in addition to all the other complaints, the plot got needlessly complex and Seagal’s costumes are laughably bad, but at least I got a relatively good blog post out of it.