Black Dawn - Reviews

Littledragon

Above The Law
Seems like from the reviews I read for this film, it is just another Seagal DTV release and nothing special. It sounds average but nothing too appealing. Just another film to add to your Seagal collection.

I really am praying for Seagal to make a comeback and produce a really enjoyable high quality action/martial arts film like he once used to.
 

latinojazz

Well-Known Member
I am not praying for Seagal to make a comeback yet.I think I lose the hope and the faith in his ambition and aspirations to get that.

If Steven is confortable in his actual situation, we are damned.And I´m starting to think seriously this since I saw Today you die.

I think the fans, we got a situation!!
 

aikidoboynj

"Lookin fit Nelson"
Maybe he should work a regular 9-5 job for a few months to remember what real back breaking work is, then let him make movies again- maybe he will realize how good his job is and stop being so lazy and fat in his movies.
 

latinojazz

Well-Known Member
aikidoboynj said:
Maybe he should work a regular 9-5 job for a few months to remember what real back breaking work is, then let him make movies again- maybe he will realize how good his job is and stop being so lazy and fat in his movies.


Ha,ha,ha...That´s good, of course he should, like many lazy football players that

Steveb thought he was invincible, Stevn thought he could fly...and fool the fans...He was both wrong...
 

Littledragon

Above The Law
aikidoboynj said:
Maybe he should work a regular 9-5 job for a few months to remember what real back breaking work is, then let him make movies again- maybe he will realize how good his job is and stop being so lazy and fat in his movies.

You sure you are on the right board my friend? We heard this all before so let's just try not t mention it anymore. ;)
 

Littledragon

Above The Law
latinojazz said:
I am not praying for Seagal to make a comeback yet.I think I lose the hope and the faith in his ambition and aspirations to get that.

If Steven is confortable in his actual situation, we are damned.And I´m starting to think seriously this since I saw Today you die.

I think the fans, we got a situation!!

Well compared to Submerged I thought Today You Die was an improvement. I thought Into The Sun was his best dtv release so far, but over all I really liked The Foreignor and in my opinion I think the Foregnor is his best DTV release.
 

Pandora

Member
I think Steven needs to rest from making movies for a year, catch his breath, do a lot more meditation and exercise, then make a big comeback just to spite his critics. Give the guy a break - he is still a wonderful human being.
 

latinojazz

Well-Known Member
Littledragon said:
Well compared to Submerged I thought Today You Die was an improvement. I thought Into The Sun was his best dtv release so far, but over all I really liked The Foreignor and in my opinion I think the Foregnor is his best DTV release.

I also think that Into the Sun is his best DTV yet, and I liked too The Foreigner, he was very charismatic in the film, only is a bit lack of action and the plot is nonsense confused.
 

latinojazz

Well-Known Member
Pandora said:
I think Steven needs to rest from making movies for a year, catch his breath, do a lot more meditation and exercise, then make a big comeback just to spite his critics. Give the guy a break - he is still a wonderful human being.

I think the same
 

Littledragon

Above The Law
Kotegashi said:
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

Thanks for your review as well as those exclusive pics Kote!!

As always with every new Seagal release, I will review this film once I have seen it. ;)
 

aikidoboynj

"Lookin fit Nelson"
Pandora said:
I think Steven needs to rest from making movies for a year, catch his breath, do a lot more meditation and exercise, then make a big comeback just to spite his critics.


I agree he needs some time to get himself back on the winning track.
 

Littledragon

Above The Law
Aint It Cool News Black Dawn Review!

Aint It Cool News Black Dawn Review:

Vern works his magic on Steven Seagal's newest DTV flick, BLACK DAWN!!!
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with my man Vern and his opinion of the newest cheesefest from Mr. Steven Seagal. If you know Vern, you know you're in for a treat. If you don't, then shame on you, but you've still got a chance to redeem yourself! Read below brother! Vern's got the gospel for ya'!
To Harry and friends:

****, it seems like just a few weeks since I saw TODAY YOU DIE. In fact, it just came out last month. But here I am with an early review of another straight to video Steven Seagal picture, BLACK DAWN, which comes out a couple days after Christmas.

Seagal plays Jonathan Cold, "ex-CIA, current freelance operative specializing in covert operations and nuclear weapons intelligence." He seems to be a bad guy because he's hired to bust a guy out of prison and help him acquire the parts for a suitcase bomb. I never got the chance to realize this before but Seagal makes a good bad guy, always standing around, narrowing his eyes and grimacing like a henchman. He should look into that.

Meanwhile, a group of young, hip Chechen terrorists have been performing robberies, saving up enough money to buy the bomb and detonate it in Los Angeles as revenge for the CIA assassination of their leader. Also they probaly hate freedom. Whatever the motive, it's gonna suck if they nuke L.A., so **** this Jonathan Cold guy for helping them. What an asshole.

Or is he? Actually, it turns out he's super top secret undercover for the CIA, "dedicated to doing work that's probaly considered by most people to be immoral or illegal, nonetheless it's stuff that we have to do in the interest of United States security around the world." Usually Seagal plays something like an ex-CIA doctor or an ex-CIA firefighter, but now he's an ex-CIA CIA officer. It's good news for the citizens of the world that these terrorists are stupid enough to hire a guy they know is a tricky double, triple, quadruple backflip agent and then be surprised when he turns on them. Stupid terrorists.

The turning point is when a female CIA character apparently named Agent Amanda (Tamara Davies) gets in trouble. She's been tracking the terrorists and Cold, who she thought was dead and who taught her everything she knows, including how to eat with chopsticks. She ends up getting captured and they're gonna kill her, so Cold has to blow his cover by rescuing her. The bad guys of course act like they knew all along Cold would betray them and dryly say they are "disappointed." Cold explains, "**** happens, y'know."

Now, I probaly shouldn't go further without explaining that the character Jonathan Cold also appeared in Seagal's 2003 picture THE FOREIGNER. (If you're reading this from the future, please turn to Chapter 14 in your SEAGALOGY books.) That makes this Seagal's only sequel other than UNDER SIEGE 2: DARK TERRITORY ten years ago. It's also Seagal's only movie with a flashback to another movie (the shootout and kerosene lamp fight in the cabin - unfortunately they leave out my favorite part, where he kicks a guy that he's already set on fire). It's a weird choice for a sequel because non Seagalogists have never heard of THE FOREIGNER and it's also probaly the least popular Seagal movie among his fans. At least that's the feeling I get from my buds over at steven-seagal.net (check it out, they got a picture of Seagal holding a baby panda).

I mean if he's gonna be doing sequels I think we'd all like to see what happened to Forest "What does it take to change the essence of a man?" Taft from ON DEADLY GROUND. Did he ever get society to stop depending on oil? It would be interesting to find out. But I do think Jonathan Cold is a good choice for a continuing character too. He's slightly different from other Seagal characters, more of a secret agent type with hints of James Bond style womanizing and a darker amoral side. In THE FOREIGNER it was actually kind of shocking how many innocent bystanders he killed - he even blows up a train station full of people to get one bad guy. ****, I think this is like that movie SYRIANA that's coming out, where George Clooney plays a CIA agent that has to do amoral things, and he gained a bunch of weight for the role. Speaking of which I don't want to be mean but early in the movie Seagal is driving around and you can see McDonalds french fries and a Big Mac wrapper on his dashboard.

Anyway, I think fans will like this better than THE FOREIGNER because it's not nearly as dull, but I gotta say that it's equally complicated and mostly humorless. It's also not as silly as the most entertaining Seagal pictures, but it definitely has its moments. There's one scene where Cold and Amanda slo-mo jump through a window to escape. This shows how close they are as teacher and student because usually Seagal slo-mo jumps through a window himself, but here he shares the experience with a loved one. Anyway they land in the back of a dump truck that's driving by. I have no idea who this mother****er is that's driving the dump truck. He doesn't seem to be an innocent bystander because he leads the bad guys on a big chase and crashes through a bunch of random cars. But if he was there to rescue them, who was he, and how the **** did he know to drive by at that exact moment? Whoever he is, he gets shot, and Cold just tosses the body out onto one of the terrorist's cars! If it weren't for skilled driving of that dump truck driver, Jonathan Cold really would be dead and L.A. would be a big hole right now. So I hope that guy gets a hero's burial. I don't think it will be open casket, though.

The most ridiculous part, and this is one of them spoilers you want to avoid so you can be surprised, is the way Cold deals with the suitcase bomb. It has a timer on it and it gets set off, so I thought Cold was gonna be like Seagal in TICKER, he would take a deep breath, "go beyond hope and fear" and "understand that death is just another stage on the playground," then cut some wires and be over with it. But Cold apparently doesn't know how to defuse a bomb, so instead he takes it in a helicopter and tosses it in the water.

No, seriously. There are even some fish there that they show swimming away from the suitcase, and hopefully they got far enough away before it blew up. Anyway, the bomb goes off and there's a big splash of water and a mushroom cloud and the helicopter gets shook around a little but there are no immediately noticeable consequences. Cold says, "We could be glowin in the dark for a while," so it is left a little ambiguous. I'm hoping we will get another Jonathan Cold adventure where he is terminally ill from the radiation or has unleashed RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD style zombies or Godzillas or something. But when the credits roll it really seems like everything is okay. There's no "Jonathan Cold will return in ON DEADLY GRAVES" or anything like that.

By the way it's interesting to note that suitcase bombs are considered female, like boats. The scientist that designed it calls it "she" and later, in the helicopter, Cold says to "Open the door and throw that bitch out!"

Another thing I noticed, the American traitor who smuggles plutonium in a coffee mug and sells it to terrorists HAS A FULL SIZED FLAG POLE IN HIS FRONT YARD. What a phoney. As I often do I couldn't help but think of Roddy Piper in THEY LIVE saying, "It ****in' figures."

Like with TODAY YOU DIE, Seagal seems to be trying harder and drinking the Lightning Bolt because the movie doesn't have the same obvious dubbing and blatant incompetence associated with most of his movies of the past few years. One major complaint though: he barely fights at all. In his only real martial arts scene, the stunt double is pretty much off screen, with only legs and arms visible, and he STILL looks nothing like Seagal. I actually had to rewind it a couple times to be sure Cold was supposed to be fighting and not somebody else.

I know everybody hates Amazon links, including me, but check out this cover!!! See that flying DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY kick there? That must be from the archives, there's nothing like that at all in this movie. And surprisingly Seagal never wears that leather coat - he actually wears a suit and tie for the entire movie (a Seagalogy first). Also, as far as I could tell Amazon was incorrect in their statement that the movie stars Lorenzo Lamas. Unless the final DVD release is drastically different from my VHS screener.

Anyway, that's it for now, but Seagal already has MERCENARY and SHADOWS OF THE PAST in the can, so I'll be back soon.

thanks boys,

Vern

http://www.geocities.com/outlawvern

http://www.lulu.com/outlawvern

p.s. If anyone is planning on buying me a case of Lightning Bolt for Christmas, I prefer the "Cherry Charge" flavor. "The Asian Experience" isn't as good, but maybe you had to be there.
 

Littledragon

Above The Law
Short Reveiw From Video Business.

http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6287268.html

Bottom Line: The latest DVD premiere from the busier-than-ever Seagal (he has starred in some 10 films over the past three years) finds the action star reprising his role of icy operative Cold, whom we first met in 2003's The Foreigner. The gunfights, explosions and chases we've come to expect from Seagal's latest projects are all here. The beefy star no longer engages in as many mano-a-mano encounters as he used to (there's only one in this outing), but he still wields his Uzi with flair, which is more than can be said for many of the picture's other elements. Black Dawn's reported $10 million-plus budget can be seen up on the screen, and it tries for a little topicality with its terrorist baddies. But there's too little energy or style to elevate Black Dawn above any other standard genre entry.
 

hofmae

New Member
Hi again... So i have the chance to watch the movie tomorrow, i will write a big review about it as soon as i saw it...But i don't looking forward to this movie... But hte good thing is, Steven make about 5 new movies in the next few months ;)
 

Littledragon

Above The Law
hofmae said:
Hi again... So i have the chance to watch the movie tomorrow, i will write a big review about it as soon as i saw it...But i don't looking forward to this movie... But hte good thing is, Steven make about 5 new movies in the next few months ;)

How did you guys get a hand of the film before it is released? How do you guys do that?? :D

Looking forward to your review Hofmae. :)
 

hofmae

New Member
Hi Littledragon, how are you ? :)

How i get to a copy? "Heaven knows" :) I mean its not that early, in about 14 days i have to official DVD in my hands, so only 2 weeks for you folks to go...
 

Littledragon

Above The Law
hofmae said:
Hi Littledragon, how are you ? :)

How i get to a copy? "Heaven knows" :) I mean its not that early, in about 14 days i have to official DVD in my hands, so only 2 weeks for you folks to go...

LOL you all are so sneaky, you guys always get an early copy, no fair.

Any way nice to see you around again my friend.

Happy Holidays! :)
 

hofmae

New Member
Here's my review!

Ok first, i enjoyed some of the new DTV Releases so im not one that always makes "hard reviews" but i didn't like Submerged. So what i can say first, it is a sequel to the Foreigner, there is a short flashback with a scene from The Foreigner. But its a new story, and overall its good.

Story:

First it is not a typical Steven Seagal-Movie Story, and it isn't a typical Steven Seagal Movie. Its alla bout a nuke, and its more kind of a Thriller than an Action Movie.
Also im happy that the story is getting clearly after about 30 minutes, Today you die was to weird for me :)

Action:

The Action is made from "medium" to "good". There is a good car chase and some OK shooutouts, nothing spectacular, but ok. Unfortunately there are no fight scenes. (Ok there are 4 scenes where he punch's or kicks someone, but thats no as much i wanted, so even Out of Reach has more fightscenes.)

Actors:

The actors were all really good, i was impressend. Steven Seagal acts really good and he is a lot in this movie, unfortunately he's not fighting but he's a lot there.

Suspense:

So here is what made me so impressed. This movie is really suspensefull. Normaly if i don't see Steven fighting at least 5 Minutes im not happy, im angry. But this movie keeps me entertained for the whole 90 minutes, because it has really a lot of suspense, you really doesn't know exactly what happens now, so because of that, this movie is really watchable.

Music:

Good Music. Can be from a A Movie.

Effects:

Ok, nothing to say about, Helicopter in the air, bad - > Explosion at the End OK. Nothing special.

Overall:

Overall i enjoyed this movie as a good directed thriller with a lot of suspense and a good Seagal. Unfortunately there aren't any real fightscenes and there is'nt much "Steven Seagal Action". Hope that he kicks more asses in Mercenary!

But overall i enjoyed this movie as a suspensefull thriller.

I'll give it 3 of 5 Stars.
 
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