Black Dawn

Steven Seagal returns in Black Dawn.Cool title.I cannot say the same for the movie though.It ranks as the Worst Seagal movie yet.Yes.It is worse than Out for a Kill.Did we really need a sequel to the Forigner that bad?

Steven returns as Jonathon Cold.Assassin for hire.This time he is out to stop a group of Terrorists and prevent Nuclier Bomb from hitting Los Angelas with the help of CIA agent Tamara Davies.

This idea seems okay.The Jonathon Cold character once again gives the big guy a chance to tarnish his clean-cut cinematic Image.You get the feeling with a decent director and production team this movie could have went somewhere.If this cost 15 million I wanna know where it was spent?It was not spent on the movie?!!

The action scenes are not bad.The movie was obviously shot like a Doug Liman flick.Its just that most of the Time Seagal is doubled so much you cannot take the movie seriously whatsoever.The script seems...what script?!Logic is Black Dawned for a dozen low-budget action movies.

Seagal is not too bad here for a whole 15 minutes he is engaging then goes about the sleepwalking that he has done for his last 2 movies.Whoever is doing his fighting is doing a commendable job.

The light that shines through is Tamara Davies as Cold's sidekick.She has the chops,skills,looks and drive that give Black Dawn a little kick in the action department.How she got in this movie is a riddle.She should be a bigger star.Nicholas Davidoff and John Pyper Feruson are not believable bad guys.

Whose idea was it to make a sequel to a bad movie in the first place? It did not set the world on fire to my memory.I can only hope they inject the next Forigner sequel with some class,imagination,Less stunt doubles and a livelier Seagal.If not then leave Jonathon Cold on Ice.

It's been a busy year for Steven Seagal, with almost innumerable films added to his CV. Many films, but a generally bog standard of movies, with Today You Die, rivalling last years atrocious Out Of Reach in the crappola stakes. Thankfully Black Dawn marks a vast improvement in thrills for a Seagal film and his best film since his big comeback, Exit Wound's a far, far away now, 4 years ago. This is also far better than the Foreigner, the film for which this is essentially a sequel to.

The film is very much in the style of the Bourne movies with the formula agency spooks and espionage stuff. It's very formulaic however the film is done with more intelligence than many of these kind of DTV nuclear/political conspiracy films, which albeit still doesn't mean it's all that intelligent. What I can say about this film, that sadly I haven't been able to say about recent Seagal flicks, is that there is a level of competence to the film and also Seagal himself doesn't stink up the movie as he did with the otherwise okay Submerged. The film is well shot and looks decent and although the editing is a little to flashy at times it generally is slick and gives the film a polished look. The cinematography goes for a naturalistic look like the Bourne films did. The score also ranges from decent, when it is ripping off John Powell's Bourne scores, to a bit lazy and average during action scenes and less important scenes.

As for the action: This is also a mixed bag with gun fights ranging from competent to lazily and quickly constructed. While the fight sequences, which are extremely few and brief, are poor. The poorness of the fights however are due to the fact that Seagal isn't present in any of them, even though his character is involved. They are poor because Seagal is hardly even used for inserts and his double is constantly being used so the director is attempting to hide this fact. As a result the fights are incredibly disorientating leaving you unsure if Seagal's character is even fighting. However there is a great car chase and the film also includes some impressive stunts. Stunt-Co-ordinator Dicky Beer certainly gives the film some excitement in periods and does a good job.

As for the big guy himself? Well Seagal it must be said is far more interested this time around. He at least performs all his own dialogue, as far as I was aware. However what is still evident is that clearly he isn't really enjoying himself too much. He also has that expected, but still annoying tendency to lazily and breathily whisper all his dialogue, with a "I hate this crap dialogue!" look on his face. There is still also the fact that Seagal regularly uses a stand in, as well as overworking his stunt double again. The film has a strange feeling to it in another respect and that is the sheer fact that overall Seagal doesn't have a lot of screen time considering he is the main lead. This means there is more focus, perhaps too much on the bad guys. Seagal disappears on occasion for up to 5 minutes. I would guess that Seagal was probably only involved in about 70% of the shooting schedule. Whether this fact is due to laziness, contract stipulation or other filming commitments (after all he does do 4 movies a year now!) I don't know, it just feels strange for the lead to go awol so often for so long.

The film is also blessed with a good supporting cast compared to other Seagal flicks. The bad guys aren't too clichéd while John Pyper Ferguson is a welcome casting, even though he seems to be putting on a bizarre accent (his character is British). Tamara Davies is hot and all round decent as Seagal's sidekick while Seagal's character is also slightly more interesting than usual cause Jonathan Cold I feel isn't a cut and dried good guy. This guy has his bad side unlike Seagal's usual goody two-shoes image.

Overall this is a marked improvement for Seagal. The first and last 20 minutes are pretty good and even though the middle section drags quite a bit the film still never had that feeling of being terrible like Today You Die. The film has it's own action too, not borrowing from other films and the car chase is excellent. Seagal fans will be pleased with this and I was surprised by my enjoyment levels for this especially after the diabolically bad trailer the movie had. Still though, Stevo has some work to do. Shadows Of The Past sounds like it has promise though. **

Don't waste your time. This is simple-minded hackwork not worth noticing, unless you're a fan of necrophilia and thus enjoy the sight of Seagal, the walking corpse. He IS a sad spectacle, so there may be some twisted entertainment in watching his bloated, tired carcass wander through another cheapjack thriller that he's paid to plug himself into for what's left of his foreign market film sales value. Strange to see a former aikido master become such a lethargic hulk, so physically immobile from personal dissipation that he can't (or won't) engage in even the slightest fight scene on camera.

Otherwise, the film is just the usual Eastern European terrorist nuke stuff with lots of slimy operators playing each other off and brandishing an endless supply of guns for fire fights that somehow never involve Seagal even being grazed. His slow-moving Zeppelin-like bulk is somehow coated in God'sOwnMiracle Armor that wards off all contact with lead, knives or fists.... or acting ability.

Who the Hell are you? I'm Steven Seagal playing Jonathan Cold, hired assassin, out to stop a group of terrorists from destroying Los Angeles with a compact nuclear device.

We get the usual mumbled laboured dialogue from Seagal, the slow motion movement. A stunt double was used for many scenes and the usual rule is, if it moves, it's the double.

I didn't find the supporting cast as irritating compared to other Seagal flicks. John Pyper Ferguson and Julian Stone make reasonable bad guys while Tamara Davies is easy on the eye and puts in a competent performance as Seagal's sidekick.

The filming is good, the plot is sensible, well sort of, and there is lots of shooting if you like that sort of thing.

Overall this isn't the worst Seagal film. The first and last 20 minutes are pretty good even though the middle section drags quite a bit.

Black Dawn (2005), The Great one is back in this recent effort(kind of an ironically bad word to use) which follows Johnathan Cold once again as this time he springs a terrorist from prison and appears to be helping in an upcoming attack. It was smart to try to make us guess whether or not he was on the bad side, but come on, we all KNOW he wasn't. I think that if he was, the movie would have been nine times better. The car chase, some decent gunfights and the presence of character actor Timothy Carhart elevate this above a one, but it is still very, very poor. People complain about Foreigner and Out for a Kill, but they both look like Oscar winners compared to this wretched piece of excrement. Steven Seagal is about in HALF of it and even that's a stretch. The fight scenes are NOT him leading me to believe we should give up on seeing the big guy fighting again. His screen presence is a draw, but not when he ain't on the freaking screen. At least he looked like he enjoyed Today You Die and did some fights himself. People, as a Steven SEagal fan, I know you want to see this. But trust me, he may return with a good movie like Belly of the Beast or Into the Sun, but this isn't it. I know you want to see it, but please trust a fellow fan and don't. You'll feel more secure in you're seagal liking if you don't.