Black Dawn (2005)

Perfect cast and a good story

best movie i've ever seen.

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

this Steven Seagal offering is also sort of an unofficial sequel to The Foreigner.it's also known as Foreigner 2.the only thing the two movies have in common though is that Seagal reprises his role of Jonathon Cold.this one is a straight to DVD production.having saad that,i actually liked it more.i thought it was more exciting,and faster paced.certainly better paced,throughput.there are no boring moments.the story could have been better though.it reminded me of an episode of 24.for whatever reason,Seagal didn't have a double doing some of his lines in this one,like he did in The Foreigner.anyway, for me,Black Dawn AKA, Foreigner 2 is a 6/10

"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.For more insanity, please visit: comeuppancereviews.com

Black Dawn starts at a Federal Prison in Utah where rouge CIA agent & nuclear weapons expert(!) Jonathan Cold (Steven Seagal, also producer) breaks international arms dealer Michael Donovan (Julian Stone) out. Impressed with Cold's efficient work Donovan offers him a job, a job to oversee his buying a new nuclear weapon from some crazy scientist dude & obtaining the plutonium to power it. Jump to Los Angeles where the deal is to take place & where CIA agent & Cold's friend Amanda Stuart (Tamara Davies) has Donovan's brother James (John Pyper-Ferguson) under surveillance, however when she is caught by Donovan's men Cold has to blow his cover & rescue her. Now the Donovan's have plans for a nuclear weapon & the equipment to build it that they intend to sell to a bunch of Russian suicide bombers who intend to become marters when they blow Los Angeles up, that is unless one-man army Cold can stop them...Directed by Alexander Gruszynski this was actually a sequel to Seagal's terrible earlier straight-to-video/DVD action thriller The Foreigner (2003) a couple of years previous in which he played CIA agent Jonathan Cold racing across Europe with a deadly package, so Black Dawn which is titled The Foreigner 2 in some countries moves the story to the US & is the sequel no-one wanted. The plot is short on action & Seagal fans looking forward to some of his trademark martial arts fights will be disappointed as there isn't any, the too complex for it's good plot is all over the place, completely fails to engage or grip & is pretty standard action thriller fare without much action or many thrills. There's this really dumb twist at the end when some guy we have only seen once is revealed to be behind it or something yet for some reason he is there to start the bomb & kill the Russian terrorists, why not just let the Russians start the bomb & blow themselves up & like just make sure your out of Los Angeles well in advance? Why stick around to potentially be blown up in a nuclear holocaust? If Donovan was going to double cross the Russians why was he so bothered about finding the real plutonium? Just give them vials of water or something, how would they know? Open them up & have a taste? I don't think so. The pace is alright & it keeps moving along but the plot is weak, predictable & the character's are forgettable.The action is pretty poor apart from a reasonable car chase involving a huge dumper truck which is quite good & probably belongs in a better film than Black Dawn. The only fight scene in Black Dawn sees one of the worst body doubles ever stand in for Seagal who is fat in this, in fact he is really fat & out of shape in this. This fight is filmed so you never see Cold's face but the stunt doubles body is all wrong & you can just tell it's not Seagal. Other than that it's just a fairly dull succession of shoot-outs between people. There's a big CGI computer effects explosion at the end but if it really was a nuclear bomb there would have been an electro magnetic pulse which would have shut down all electrical equipment including the helicopter Seagal was flying & thus send him crashing into the Ocean but Black Dawn isn't that concerned with factual accuracy.With a supposed budget of about $15,000,000 Black Dawn looks alright, it's a little flat & forgettable but the production values are decent enough. The acting isn't great from no-one of any interest & Seagal again seems dubbed a lot of the time.Black Dawn is a poor action thriller that fails to deliver on any count, it's dull & boring & utterly forgettable. Not quite as bad as The Foreigner but not too far behind it.

Makes you wonder how many more times that he can get away with being associated with this type of bad everything that deals with the movie industry. It was obvious that all action (I even think some walking scenes more than 50 feet) we dubbed. He even acted bored with his lines. He was never a favorite or a serious contender for any awards but his movies are normally entertaining to a degree. This movie was a waste of time and money and it was to the point where you started feeling sorry for him. Being a "hasbeen" is nothing anybody desires to face but if he continues trying to be the stud of yesteryear he will frame himself forever as a joke. There is a place for him in action movies he needs to look for it and go in that direction. There is a reason the James Bond character continues to be replaced. Steven should take his cue from that. However, after all is said, I would not desire to read my comments to him eyeball to eyeball.