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Best movie ever!

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

"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.

There are two ways to approach this movie: as a Steven Seagal vehicle, or as just another DTV action film. If you choose the first way, you'll probably be disappointed. Seagal is overweight, gives his usual lazy performance, is off-screen for much of the running time, does only some arm-twisting, and in his longest (i.e. 20 seconds long) fight scene he is clearly doubled by an Asian man! But if you take the second way, "Black Dawn" is actually a decent time-passer. It has a reasonably slick look, a good score, a car vs. truck chase that wouldn't be out of place in a higher-budgeted film, and a plot with at least a semblance of complexity. Best of all, it has Tamara Davies, who is gorgeous, convincing, and has way more intense action scenes than Seagal. If I was making the movie, I would have the climax be a gunfight followed by a fistfight between her and the hot terrorist chick played by Angela Gots, instead of the cheesy fake explosion we do get. But that's another story. (**)

After seeing Submerged on TV and saw a couple of other Steven Seagal movies like Today You Die and Into the Sun, they were a lot better than this. This is another sequel from the great one since Under Siege (Which I never knew about Seagal making this sequel) from the 2003 movie The Foreinger and that one was better than this and I can't believe what crap this movie is. Don't get me wrong Steven, I am a fan and this is my 2nd worst movie from you and I hope you will comeback in a movie where it is better than this but I still hated this movie for the rest of my life.I give this 2/10