`SHADOW CONSPIRACY' NEVER SEES THE LIGHT.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

The most alarming thing about ``Shadow Conspiracy'' is the proposition it puts forth that Charlie Sheen is the only guy in government you can trust.

Sheen plays super-slick presidential adviser (or speechwriter, or White House press secretary; it's never clear which) Bobby Bishop. When he's not shooting hoops with his street pals, he's cleverly talking the chief executive (Sam Waterston) out of delivering a speech that will give Wall Street a collective heart attack.

But Bishop's savvy apparently isn't enough for some, well, shadowy conspiracy that's based somewhere in the president's cabinet. The plotters' operatives - well, mostly, a flamboyant assassin (Stephen Lang) who thinks he can act like the Terminator and get away with shooting up D.C. while dressed in a flowing white trench coat - wipe out a whole think tank worth of brainiacs who've developed a computer program that exposes government corruption. Outlandishly, Bobby gets framed for all of this.

He's soon on the run, with nothing but a growth of beard that magically thickens and disappears from scene to scene to disguise him. In one particularly ludicrous chase sequence, Bobby falls a good five stories off a window washer's rig, then falls about equally as far down a raging sewer, with no perceivable physical damage.

As everything from spy satellites to a few divisions of the Secret Service's most inept agents try to track him down, the only help Bobby can turn to is ace reporter and ex-girlfriend Amanda Givens (Linda Hamilton, who seems to have forgotten all she knows about running from Terminator types) and his mentor, White House Chief of Staff Jake Conrad (Donald Sutherland). And he definitely can't trust one of them.

Unbelievable from the get-go (a murder victim falls through a window, and no one in the small house hears it) to the casting (Sheen as a super-Stephanopoulos?) to what has to be the silliest action movie climax of the '90s, ``Shadow Conspiracy'' is consistently dumb without ever making that transcendent step into the dumb fun category.

Directed at a feverish but decidedly nongripping pace by George Cosmatos (``Rambo,'' ``Tombstone''), the film can boast a wry and sly performance by Sutherland and an amusingly antic one by ``NYPD Blue's'' Nicholas Turturro as a tenacious government computer wiz.

Otherwise, this is one ``Conspiracy'' that should have been plotted out a whole lot better.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Shadow Conspiracy'' (R; violence, language).

The stars: Charlie Sheen, Linda Hamilton, Donald Sutherland, Stephen Lang, Sam Waterston.

Behind the scenes: Directed by George P. Cosmatos. Written by Adi Hasak and Ric Gibbs. Produced by Terry Collis.

Running time: One hour, 46 minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: One Star.

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: Washington, D.C., insider Bobby Bishop (Charlie Sheen) and ace reporter and ex-girlfriend Amanda Givens (Linda Hamilton) must run for their lives in ``Shadow Conspiracy.''