Black Dawn - Reviews

Administrator

Administrator
Staff member
Please post Black Dawn reviews in this thread.

I know it has been started early, but there is already a review on Ain't It Cool for the movie. :)

This time i will keep away from the edit button. :D
 

Nick

The Writer
What are you saying? Are you in the right state of mind?







… Oops forgot to mentioned I was being sarcastic. It sounds well I have a few words on my mind but they wouldn't be suitable ;)
 

Administrator

Administrator
Staff member
Well last night i watched the preview copy that my friend sent me. The picture and sound quality were not great, but it was watchable.

Anyway here's my short review of the movie.

Plot:
Yes Steven Seagal returns as Jonathan Cold from his previous movie 'The Foreigner'. 'The Foreigner' in my opinion was his worst movie. It was possibly one of the worst movies i had seen. Until now. :( The plot is pretty simple, Jonathan Cold is undercover infiltrating a gang of terrorists who are planning to detonate a nuclear weapon. Of course he is going to try and stop them.

Visual effects:
I had to review these seperately. The effects in this movie are probably some of the worst you will see. They are 'thunderbird' like again. Surely they can do better than this. The last sequence in the helicopter is the worst. I'm sure you'll agree.

Co-Stars:
Tamara Davies seemed to me to be the star of the movie. She had the most work to do and i think she was on screen more than Steven Seagal. She played her part well although she did seem to swear alot. The rest of the cast were poor with the exception of the bearded bad guy who i thought did okay.

Action:
Well where do i start. When you see a Steven Seagal movie you expect action. In this movie there was a fair amount. There was a car chase in the middle which i think Vern's review from Ain't It Cool sums up nicely. Steven Seagal and Tamara Davies jump from a building into the back of a truck and are then driven away by the driver who we've never seen before. He's getting shot at by the bad guys though, but once clear he keeps going. He drives smashing into other cars for no apparent reason. This to me was pretty weird. Then during the chase he is shot, we don't know if he's dead on not, but after saving Steven Seagal and Tamara Davies lives he is just flung out of the truck onto the ground at high speed. Steven Seagal didn't even check to see if he was dead. :D There were also plenty of shoot outs which were reasonably well done. As for the fighting the less said the better. Steven Seagal has only about 4 short fights that i can remember. The first is shot very poorly. This takes place in the warehouse and is over in about 10 seconds. Obviously shot with the fake leg. Another on the stairs is all the stunt double. This is perhaps the longest fight sequence.

Out of the whole movie there is one sequence when Steven Seagal kills the bearded baddie. This was over in about 2 seconds, but was clearly Steven Seagal and it was well executed without the aid of a stunt double. For me this was the best sequence of the whole movie.

Trenchcoat:
It was gone in this movie and replaced by a suit.

Overall:
I have to give this movie 0.5/5. For me it is on a par with 'The Foreigner', maybe even worse if that was possible. :( As an administrator of this site it pains me to say it, but really these poor sub-standard movies are destroying Steven Seagal's movie career. I wish they would combine the budget for his 4 movies released this year and get better co-stars and behind the scenes staff and make 1 great movie rather than 4 dreadful ones.
 

suziwong

Administrator
Staff member
Thank you Craig for this review I read very carefully..

But finally we can say its another poor and bad movie from our hero !!!

I am sorry again.. :(
I will pay another 50 USD for this. Just for Steven !!!!

sincerely

suzi
 

DiDa

Super Moderator
Staff member
Thanks for the review Craig, it's very sad to hear that the movie is not good...But what about voicedubbing in Black Dawn? Is Seagal saying his own lines?
 

Administrator

Administrator
Staff member
DiDa said:
Thanks for the review Craig, it's very sad to hear that the movie is not good...But what about voicedubbing in Black Dawn? Is Seagal saying his own lines?
Yes sorry i forgot to mention that. From what i could here it was all Steven Seagal. :)
 

hofmae

New Member
I thought from the beginning that Black Dawn wouldn't be that good... Im looking forward for Mercenary. Even when they had problem on the set, im sure Mercenary will have a lot of cool action scenes :)
 

Littledragon

Above The Law
I was never really excited about this film and alot of people who saw it so far said it was terrible, as usual I will support Seagal and buy his film to add to my collection but I am sure it's going to be another one of his DTV releases where I painfully have to watch one time and store it on my shelf never to be watched again.
 

jhogan

New Member
Littledragon said:
I was never really excited about this film and alot of people who saw it so far said it was terrible, as usual I will support Seagal and buy his film to add to my collection but I am sure it's going to be another one of his DTV releases where I painfully have to watch one time and store it on my shelf never to be watched again.

In that case, why don't you just rent it instead of wasting money buying it ? A lot cheaper !
 

Kotegashi

Master Of Disaster
Staff member
This wasn't so bad......untill it started

It has been a while, but I got lucky and received a preview version of Black Dawn last night and I just finished watching it.

Plot:
As Craig stated, the plot is reasonably simple and straight forward :gun:. Seagal plays Jonathan Cold once again and the story is that he is to be believed that he was killed after shooting 6 agents. Julia Stone plays his former "student" in the agency.

Jonathan Cold is undercover to stop a criminal from selling a nuclear device to some foreign terrorists. His cover gets blown and with his former student he is in a race against time to stop them from completing and detonating the bomb..........With other words, the plot is just an excuse for killing a lot of people and blow stuf up.

Action:
The action is frequent and keeps the pace of the movie going, but it has it flaws.

Where should I start? The first scene after the opening titles (that were probably the longest opening titles I've ever seen) is supposed to be in the financial district of Amsterdam..........supposed to be. In this scene there were two things correct......the numberplates on the cars and the Dutch police van. What has this to do with action I hear you say? In this scene the terrorists rob a armored car carrying diamonds. They shoot the armed guards (armed guards are illegal in Holland by the way) And the armed driver starts shooting at them. What would you do if you got shot at? I would run and duck for cover, but this woman-terrorist just easily walks away and only now and then hides in a doorway. The driver must be blind not to hit her. BIG BUMMER!

Other shoot-outs are done a lot better except when someone is shooting towards camera. You hear the shot, but you don't see anything happening.

Fights there are a few and most of them are obvious doubles, but they are okay, better then his latest doubles.

The infamous truck-scene is on the other hand a pretty nice one. When Cold and the woman agent jump through the window they land in the back of the truck. The terrorist shoot at the truck wounding the driver who then is unable to steer right and just floors it to get out of there. In the chase the driver is killed and Cold throws him onto the following car and takes the wheel.

FX:
Indeed a special mention worth. They stink! There are not many digital-FX present but they really stink. Movement of the characters and or props are not synchronised with the background, the coloring is totally off and the black outlines around the "real" things are clearly visible. 10 years ago these FX would have been great, nowadays you would even see better and more realistic stuff in games (f.e. Far Cry). Shame on the FX-company.

Cast/acting
For once I thought the acting wasn't as bad. It's better then the Foreigner, OFAK, BOTB, Submerged or the japanese/chinese from Into the Sun. Julia Stone does a lot of overacting, but the rest do their best to give a performance.

Seagal did seem to put in an effort until 3/4 into the movie. Somehow his interest in the project seems to have slipped away and he moves and acts really uninterested. His "real" voice is present during all his dialogues. Unfortunately his pose before, during and right after a fight are all exactly the same which shows that he didn't move at all (stunt double!!!) during the fights.

Music:
Finally something really positive. I'm a big fan of soundtracks from movies and this one I liked very much. It had suspensefull themes for supposed to be suspensefull scenes and fast hard music when there was action.

There is only one but...........it sounds a lot like music from The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy (music by John Powell). I'll try to upload some music fragments (with sound-fx from the movie unfortunately).


Story:
Tetian terrorists are stealing diamonds all over Europe to finance an atomic bomb which they want to set of in LA.

Jonathan Cold is hired by American criminals to free their leader from prison and help them as a nuclear device expert. These criminals want to sell the terrorists their bomb in exchange for the diamonds.

The criminals are beeing watched by the cia, fbi or EPA (this doesn't become obvious in the movie) and one of them recognises Cold.

When she gets captured, Cold rescues her and blows his cover. They are on the run and try to stop the criminals and terrorist.

Somewhere along the line the head of the agency is revealed to be corrupt and the one trying to detonate the bomb.

Of course Cold and the woman save the day and Cold disappears to probably return in another lousy dtv sequel.

Conclusion/rating:
It's a standard action-flick. Nothing fancy, just shooting some fighting and blowing things up. The fx and the obvious lack of interest on Seagal's part don't make it a great one, or one to watch over and over. It's better then Submerged, OFAK and The Foreigner but it's worse then BOTB, Into The Sun and Today You Die. I think all fans are craving for some old fashion action from the man, like he did in Above The Law, Marked for Death, Under Siege or Exit Wounds.

It's what I keep saying, he needs a big budget and a story he wants to tell (like Into the Sun) so that he is motivated and wants to perform his best.

Rating is a 5,5/10.

Peace

And some pictures from the movie
 

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suziwong

Administrator
Staff member
Thank you very much for your review and especially thank you very much for photos my friend..

suzi
 

Kotegashi

Master Of Disaster
Staff member
suziwong said:
Thank you very much for your review and especially thank you very much for photos my friend..

suzi

As always, you are very welcom my friend. I'm trying to extract some audio from the picture and will try to upload shortly.

By the way, you'll like this movie....Seagal looks good in suit!

Peace
 

suziwong

Administrator
Staff member
Kotegashi said:
As always, you are very welcom my friend. I'm trying to extract some audio from the picture and will try to upload shortly.

By the way, you'll like this movie....Seagal looks good in suit!

Peace

oh thank you again for audio.. Ahh Seagal yes he looks always very handsome with suits.. I liked him in photos..

suzi
 

latinojazz

Well-Known Member
And some pictures from the movie[/QUOTE]

He really looks great in the pictures, and that is only what I want.The suitcases are really cool, and his screenpressence too.

At this time of Steven´s crappy movies, I only need to see he goodlooking to buy the movie.

And Steven looks great, I give a damn the rest now.I only want to see his face in my 42 plasma.

Love everybody and thanks for the pics
 

supertom

Disgruntled fan!
Black Dawn review!

Hey folks I'm new to the board and am a Seagal fan, or a one time Seagal fan more accurately. In general I am a big action movie fan particularly of the DTV guys because there aren;t many followable action stars in the big screens and I grew up watching the 80's crew of VD, Lundgren, Seagal.
I have seen Black Dawn, having watched the screener and following are my thoughts, but first to say something else. I have not really enjoyed any of the big guys films since Exit Wounds and if you're going by a 5 star rating system I can't see hes done anything worthy of more than 2, until Black Dawn that is. He's also done a lot of really bog standard pieces of turd as well: The diabolical Today You DIe, Out Of Reach, Out For A Kill, Ticker and Foriegner, all sad insults to theejoyable early career of Mr Seagal. Plus of course the notorios use of voice doubles, stand ins and fight doubles becoming increasingly evident with Seagal.

Anyway here is my review for Black Dawn, enjoy.

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 cliched 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. **1/2

Tom Jolliffe.
 

latinojazz

Well-Known Member
Not sounds bad...I´m very excited for the movie.I like very much the pics posted and your review.

Thanks supertom
 

supertom

Disgruntled fan!
Seems like a mixed response so far. It was a pretty bad film overall but I kind of enjoyed the simplicity and the fact it wasn't as lazily put together as Seagal's other recent ones. When considering Submerged for example that was different cuase I enjoyed all the non Seagal parts of that but he tended to stink up the parts he was in, especially the action when the director has to film around the fact that Seagal is not there fighting. That movie suffered cause the lead star ruined it which was a real shame. Had the film starred someone else in the lead it would have been better. In Black Dawn Seagal seemed at least more interested. The music wasn't bog standard like his recent ones either. Of course when you look at the horrible Today You Die, a lot of crap stuff will look a lot better. At least Black Dawn didn't raid the NU Image back catalogue for it's footage. The real sad fact of that film was that the best action scene in the entire movie was stolen from a lame Peter Weller movie made nearly ten years ago.
 

KROM

Active Member
My Review

What can i say, Steven is here in Romania since few months, he really loves my country, like Wesley Snipes who fall in love with the girls and the atmosphere. Here is the land of all oportunities here, but if you wanna make a great movie here like Could Mountain you have to invest more.

Steven is starting to have a diet, to became in a better shape, he is frustraded also by his look. Now with all of his mistakes filming in Bulgaria, with very bad standards in cinematography, seem that he's going straight to TV.
Black Down looked just like a cheap police tv series and i hope this will be his last movie in Bulgaria. I'm sure that the movie filmed here will be far better but he has to think investing and producing not only to get the salary...
 
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