Black Dawn - Tempesta di fuoco

Despite some awful editing, missteps in plot, obvious fluff scenes, this is actually not a "bad" movie. What makes it uncomfortable to watch is the now aging and overweight Seagal unable to do *any* of his own stunts! The terrorists are hopeless zealots but not unbelievably so. The CIA stuff is trite but not untenably unrealistic. The cast does what they can to keep the plot moving along...and it's usually enough. Seagal's dialog (in breathy monotone) is what too often slows down the action. Timothy Carhart is perfectly cast as the female agent's supervisor: he's the *real* question-mark re good guy vs bad guy. But then most of the actors turn in credible performances. Unlike some "B" movies I didn't feel the need to turn this one off halfway thru.

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.

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.

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.

"Black Dawn" is one of the weakest Seagal movies. This is a sequel to "The Foreigner". There's no reason to make this except that it's another paycheck in the big man's pockets. In my opinion, Seagal will probably never make another good movie like "Marked For Death" or "Above The Law". Those days are behind him.

The "plot" is about Russian gangsters in Romania who have a nuclear device. Jonathan Cold (Seagal) has to stop them. Seagal is barely in this and he doesn't do anything, and I mean ANYTHING: fighting, acting, or exercise He has to find better scripts, or at least a director who needs to realize that Seagal is the draw, not some nameless Romanian.

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