Strong and Moving!

Load of rubbish!!

Blistering performances.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

So Seagal is Jonathan Cold, a high-level ex-CIA agent who is now a "freelance operative," which sounds like nothing more than a title invented for cheesy action movies for a hero who takes matters into his own hands. "Operative" literally means secret agent, and freelance basically means someone who works for themselves, or someone who occasionally works for other people and organizations but is overall self-employed. Oh, and they all thought that Cold was dead. And in case you forget, notice the incessant repetition of the line "I thought you were dead!"Anyway, you get the idea. Cold is a marksman and an expert in martial arts and nuclear weapons. What a resume! Marksman doesn't really come into play much, but an expert in martial arts and nuclear weapons is just too perfect! One for the action and one for the story, right? This is Action Movie-making 101.The story involves a group of bad guys which, like far too many of Seagal's recent movies, are stupid, boring action baddie clichés, who want to basically destroy the world and start "a new global economy." Yeah, whatever. Black Dawn reveals to the world that there is a nuclear test facility in Pasadena, California. I didn't know that, but then again, I also always thought you had to wear some kind of foil suit to handle raw plutonium, but I guess that's not really true. In this movie, one of the bad guys handles it wearing no safety equipment other than a pair of gloves, and he's even smoking a cigarette. This guy is hardcore!Seagal, unfortunately, just looks like he's not trying anymore. The goal is to get a nuclear weapon away from the bad guys and then away from the populace before it detonates and kills millions of people. We're asked to believe that it would take less than four minutes to get into a helicopter, start it up, take off, and fly out over the ocean and drop the bomb into the ocean and have it sink deep enough to explode without doing any damage. This is a hell of a stretch and is fraught with amazingly bad blue-screen work, but strangely it's the girl's shocked reaction ("What?? ") when Cold tells her to throw the bomb out the window into the action that seems the most ridiculous. Maybe she wanted to keep it?We expect very little from a Seagal movie, especially recent ones. He started his career in gritty, hardcore action movies, peaking with Under Siege, but lately his movies go for more story than they can sustain, resulting in cheesy, talky action schlock with too much bad acting and not enough fighting, which is what Seagal's fans really want to see

Steven Seagal wears a suit and tie for the entirety of the movie. Unfortunately for him, this doesn't help to hide his huge bulk. I spent most of the movie thinking about how fat he's become since the last Seagal movie I watched (which must have been "Hard to Kill").The basic plot of the movie is revealed very early. This is no surprise to anybody. What is a surprise is when there's a gunfight scene and a dozen characters appear who have no other part in this movie and kill each other. Even Steven Seagal has two partners who appear for 1 minute at the beginning of the movie, then 1 minute halfway through the movie, and both are killed only 2 minutes later.The special effects are distracting. There's a scene where the two main characters are sitting in a helicopter on a roof. Except it's not on a roof, it's in the studio and the foreground looks washed out and Steven Seagal's tie flickers due to the blue screen.The DVD cover shows Seagal wearing a black leather jacket - which he does not wear in the movie - and his face has been photoshopped to look younger and thinner than it actually is. The back of the DVD shows Seagal holding two guns crosswise - a technique he does not use in this movie - and indeed it's a younger, fitter Seagal holding those guns, wearing that leather jacket.The "special features" stank too. "Making of Black Dawn" can be summed up as "let's show the main characters filming the helicopter sequence" and Tamara Davies laments that she finds it hard to feel tension when she's sitting in a fake helicopter on the set. Somehow I'm not surprised. And the best she can say about director Gruszynski is that he is "convenient".The "Interview with Steven Seagal" contained some flashed scenes which would have been better off in the "Making of" title. The rest of it wasn't an interview. There was no interviewer, there were no questions. It was Steven Seagal rambling. It sort of devolved into various pictures of Seagal doing humanitarian work in the 3rd world. I'm not quite sure why.Five trailers on the DVD showed 5 Sony movies which, if truth be told, looked much better than this rubbish. Some were Seagal movies, some were Wesley Snipes.This movie isn't worth buying; isn't worth renting either. Seagal should lose some weight and train up before acting again, if he wishes to be the star of an action picture.

At the beginning I would like to say, that I'm a big fun of Seagal and his movies.But not this one. I'm sorry but Seagal is too fat in this movie ! Too fat for an action star. In that shape he can't play super secret agent, but only a Santa Claus. Anyway the worst thing in this movie are fight scenes.Seagal is doubled in fight scenes by another actor. It is very sad for me ,because I practice martial arts and I admire Seagal's Aikido abilities . I think that he is cheating his fans doing something like this. Blacdawn is very boring, small budget B-movie .What else? Bad acting and horrible story. And the finale of this film with helicopter and a bomb....NO COMMENT !!

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.