Black Dawn Movie
Storyline
TAGLINES
It's always darkest before dawn.
Jonathan Cold returns, this time he goes Undercover to stop a group of Terrorists before they bomb Los Angeles.
| Steven Seagal | Jonathan Cold |
| Tamara Davies | Agent Amanda Stuart |
| John Pyper-Ferguson | James Donovan |
| Julian Stone | Michael Donovan |
| Nicholas Davidoff | Nicholi |
| Roman Varshavsky | Fedor |
| Noa Hegesh | Julia |
| Warren Derosa | Sergey |
| Angela Gots | Stazi |
| Don Franklin | Max Pierson |
| Timothy Carhart | Greer |
| David St. James | Macabe |
| Eddie Velez | Brody |
| Matt Salinger | Myshkin |
| Ryan Bollman | Billy Raduziner |
| Alexander Gruszynski |
3.70 out of 10 (849 votes)
Visitor Reviews
Seriously awfully bad... and not in a good way!
posted on 01 Jul 2009Steven Seagal. What is there else to say about his recent movies? He's not just phoning his performance in, he just seems totally and utterly disinterested in even attempting to act his lines! He doesn't even do his own fight scenes anymore, because anytime a fight occurred, the cameraman curiously ensured we never got to see Segals face during the fights.The 'story' is beyond perfunctory, its as old an cliché as they come, that in itself wouldn't be a bad thing I suppose if the rest of the action, acting, effects were good.... alas they are not even anywhere near! The music.... it took two people to write the music, and frankly, i've heard far superior music made as a hobby on computers from the 1990's! The only reason I even bothered to watch this 'movie' was because it had Steven Seagal in it.... I see no reason to torture myself with any of his future movies if this is the standard we can expect! Where did it all go wrong? Under Siege was a great movie, he even ACTED in that movie, here.... he's just not bothering, hence why I won't be bothering with anymore of his movies.Avoid... its more crap than you think!
"Dead or alive Cold is dangerous."Poor Steven Seagal thriller.
posted on 02 May 2009Black 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.
More like a Black Eye
posted on 29 Apr 2009To your wallet well in this case my wallet. Here i go thinking that this one would be any different from Seagal's recent "efforts". Not even close i cant believe i even lasted as long as i did. Not really anything nice to say about this the acting was marginal at best, fighting scenes were just blah and to be honest. He is a bit old and a tad bit more out of shape weight wise. Sorry i'm a fan but even i know when to throw in the towel...DING...throw it in please.
A pretty neat Seagal thriller, less filler, but not without flaws.
posted on 17 Mar 2009I've just finished watching this movie, and i've gotta admit, that it's a pretty good movie. It actually feels like a real movie (unlike the jokey and cobbled together affair that was 'Today You Die', and more importantly, Seagal seems to be enjoying himself, whilst not forgetting the mood of the piece. At first, the idea of making a sequel to 'The Foreigner' didn't appeal to me, but 'Black Dawn' ups the action stakes a little, and isn't as complicated. Seagal returns as 'Johnathan Cold', who finds his latest employer is dealing with some pretty bad terrorists, intent of blowing up half of America. Being a freelance is one thing, but killing innocent people, forces the 'stout sensei' to rethink his game-plan, and stop the terrorists (in usual Seagal fashion.)Unlike other recent Seagal movies, this one doesn't have much filler, so it's more simply plotted. The performances and actors are fine, the direction is free of the rapid cutting techniques (that have ruined some Seagal movies of late) and it has a pretty good truck chase sequence.Now to the bad aspects. I don't (and never would) expect Seagal to be doing 'ninja-backflips' but the fight doubles are un-needed (surely, he still has the speed?) and one fight double (near the end, in a building stairway) is horrendous (the guy, even from behind looks nothing like Seagal, he even has a different coloured coat, hair style, etc) and some of the Blue-screen Cgi work is poor (without having to be) The helicopter sequence near the end has some pathetic opticals (surely, no effects company could charge people money for this work?)But these minor gripes aside, 'Black Dawn' is a pretty straightforward action picture, that moves along at a nice pace. Seagal performs all his own dialogue (an unfortunate plus, in recent movies) and like i've said, no pretentious 'filler' plot, to further complicate matters. I'd be more than willing to see Seagal continue this character, as long as he puts more effort into his abilities that got him noticed in the first place.....i.e, amazing aikido!All in all, a good movie (hampered, but not spoilt) by rushed/poor technical aspects. Good to see (producer) Andrew Stevens play a cameo, as the guard at the institute (he should have bigger roles, as i've always found him a likable performer)Big Lee gives this pretty good movie 8 out of 10
A Slight Bit Better
posted on 03 Mar 2009This film is really called Foreigner 2: Black Dawn and Steven Seagal,(Jonathan Cold) once again appears in this film as a real bad dude dealing with all the horrible under-world characters. Seagal even directed this film and the stunts and action were very low key and not performed very professional. It looks like Jonathan Cold put on a few extra pounds and and is acting more like Marlon Brando with his almost silent whispers. Jonathan meets up with a gal he had known years ago and a very good looker, he does manage to save her from a very close shave with death. There are plenty of explosions and the real bomb is when you start watching this film and wonder when it will ever end. It is about time to put an end to these Foreigner series and move on to something more interesting.
Steven Seagal is back?....
posted on 03 Feb 2009Black Dawn (2005), The Great one is back in this recent effort(kind of an ironically bad word to use) which follows Johnathan Cold once again as this time he springs a terrorist from prison and appears to be helping in an upcoming attack. It was smart to try to make us guess whether or not he was on the bad side, but come on, we all KNOW he wasn't. I think that if he was, the movie would have been nine times better. The car chase, some decent gunfights and the presence of character actor Timothy Carhart elevate this above a one, but it is still very, very poor. People complain about Foreigner and Out for a Kill, but they both look like Oscar winners compared to this wretched piece of excrement. Steven Seagal is about in HALF of it and even that's a stretch. The fight scenes are NOT him leading me to believe we should give up on seeing the big guy fighting again. His screen presence is a draw, but not when he ain't on the freaking screen. At least he looked like he enjoyed Today You Die and did some fights himself. People, as a Steven SEagal fan, I know you want to see this. But trust me, he may return with a good movie like Belly of the Beast or Into the Sun, but this isn't it. I know you want to see it, but please trust a fellow fan and don't. You'll feel more secure in you're seagal liking if you don't.
Beer gut and choppy lines, Steve is depressing me slowly...
posted on 30 Dec 2008Welcome to another movie documenting the slow decline of my hero. Watching Steve fall apart from movie to movie is making my own aging easier. I mean if the Steve can age and get fat, I feel better about me getting fat and old. In this movie, his "not even close" stuntman works hard although there are no real martial arts anyway. It's a "run and gun" and Steve left his running shoes in other movies. I think I enjoy paying for his retirement by buying these "straight to DVD" release wonders. I am going to his website to buy some almond oil in a few minutes.
Former Martial Arts Sensei Geting Lazy
posted on 24 Dec 2008The Great One (who is also a producer here) takes up one of his worst films, namely sleep-inducing `The Foreigner,' and he does the same role that nobody seems to remember. One good news is that the sequel turns out more decent than the original, but that isn't saying much.
In `Black Dawn' Steven Seagal plays Jonathan Cold again, who is at first seen helping the brother of one bad arms dealer break out of jail, apparently working for the bad guys. Well, perhaps he should have, for in that case things might have been more interesting than this dull B action film.
Besides the obvious stunt doubles, the inept editing, and the chubby face of the star who seems to prefer to stay out of the `action scenes,' you will see CIA agent played by Tamara Davies, also former protégé of Cold. There is one so-so action involving a runaway garbage truck and some OK shoot-outs, but their terrible acting which occupies most of the second half of the film makes everything dull in the end. The idea of Chechen terrorists or nuke attack are reduced to nothing because of the hulk of the star who seems not to care.
What you see `in Black Dawn' is your former aikido sensei getting lazy in his work. That's a sad thing to see.
Horrid
posted on 27 Nov 2008Plainly pathetic. The backdrop in some of the action scenes are so visibly unreal that it made watching this painful. At one point near the beginning a photo of a test lab Dr and a terrorist is so badly edited it looks like one of the Internet pictures with superimposed faces planted on someone else's body. I also enjoyed watching the taking of the bomb up an unknown number of floors to a roof, starting a helicopter and then flying an estimated 25 miles off shore and all in 4 minutes and 30 seconds. I hope the director had fun making this. I also have to agree with some previous writers that seeing a very over weight Seagal is sad. You never really notice his weight until the very end when he is walking away. Also the champagne lunch with the CIA agent at the end is terribly phony and acted at an uncomfortable feeling. What a terrible waste of time.
Get my alternative pies out of the parallel oven!
posted on 17 Nov 2008Even by Seagal DTV standards this is really... quite something. It's considerably worse than The Foreigner, the previous film featuring the same Seagal character, Jonathan Cold. Yes, that's right it's a sequel to that film you probably didn't know existed, your friend passed on, and your neighbour gave up on after twenty minutes. But just think of the possibilities; in an alternative universe maybe this character is as popular as James Bond. "No Mr. Cold, I expect you to die!". In this world they are already on the fifth Cold movie. "Look Up! Look Down! Look Out! Here Comes The Biggest Cold Of All!". Soon, Seagal will quit the role, hoping to stretch as an actor. A new actor is cast as Cold. He re-captures the hearts of audiences, but not the critics. In 2022, Seagal makes an unofficial Cold film. "The spirit of the 2000s is reborn!" the critics cry.In this world however, Cold isn't a popular character and his films are as much fun as going through withdrawal.Was this review helpful? Didn't think so.
More nonsense by the fat man of action
posted on 03 Nov 2008Very poor effort from Seagal, who in recent times seems to be churning out films on a weekly basis. This is a conspiracy type movie involving a nuclear weapon falling into the wrong hands (yawn!). Seagals character is a mysterious ex agent with an unclear agenda (what again!). None of us watch Seagal films for his acting prowess, we want to see glib one liners and plenty of scrapping. There is precious little of either in this film and the action scenes that are in it are done by someone else. He doesn't even really feature as the starring role, leaving a bunch of stereotypical bad guys and hired goons to plod through what masquerades as a plot. As if what i've told you is not enough to keep you away from this drivel, it is also worth mentioning that the special effects are truly terrible as well. Finally, to sum up, this film features Luke Goss from that vomit inducing band Bros as the lead bad guy. Watch this and you'll gouge your eyes out.
Worst Stunt Double Ever
posted on 18 Oct 2008There was a scene in this movie, Cold is running up the hotel stairs and fighting bad guys along the way, where the stunt double had different color hair, different color suit, wasn't as tall as Seagal, and they showed the his face in the scene, and he looked nothing like Seagal. I thought, "Who is this?" Then I realized it was supposed to be Cold. You mean, Steve isn't doing his own fighting scenes? Huh? This is a lame movie. IMDb requires 10 lines, so I must keep going, or fail to warn you about this movie. The plot was OK at first, but people start to do things that don't make any sense given their motives. The action is nothing you haven't seen many times before. There is this extremely awkward, and somewhat confusing scene at the end, where Cold and his apprentice are talking about nights spent together, but there was nothing like this in the movie. Was it supposed to be a joke? This was a terrible movie.
Very sad, painful to watch...
posted on 03 Oct 2008It was painful to watch this one. The day that stunt doubles start doing your trademark fighting scenes, it's time to hang it up. I love his early movies. Seagal looked bloated and uncomfortable. Everything, including the opening credits, looked cheap, rushed and disjointed. The transition between scenes was rough and choppy. The only star in this one was the computer geek whose brief appearance was actually funny. Can't recommend it, sorry.
More of the same, just better
posted on 18 Aug 2008Much like all of his movies,Lord Steven is retired/ undercover/ in hiding/ incognito/ or part of the CIA/ FBI/ Black Ops/ Special undercover group of your choice...
He must personally save the world and his partner/ student from the bad guys that are dealing in Nukes.
If this sounds derrogatory towards the movie it is not! I am a huge Seagal fan and own every movie he has released, I think the production and storyline of Black Dawn is more the caliber of his earlier movies and I quite enjoyed it. I am glad to see he is putting out a better product! But it would not matter because like all TRUE Seagal fans if he is in the movie, I will buy it no matter how bad. I would just like to see his movies return to the big screen where he belongs. If you are a fan buy this you will love it. If you are not a fan buy it anyway as it is a good movie and the plot/ story is good enough that the common action hero movie buffs will like it.
I don't mind renting junk for a dead Sunday afternoon; but
posted on 01 Aug 2008Makes 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.
Better than expected Seagal Flick *** out of *****
posted on 24 Jul 2008In 'Black Dawn' a sequel to Seagal's earlier Flick 'The Foreigner' from 2 years earlier again has Seagal playing Johnathan Cold a rogue CIA Agent, this time he's undercover infiltrating a group of terrorists who plan to detonate a Nuclear Bomb over Los Angeles.As most will know the plot in a Steven Seagal Movie is rather irrelevant as it's usually just one big plot hole from start to finish & people will moan about Seagal's weight gain, duff acting, dubbing & obvious body doubles, but to be honest those who moan have far too much time on their hands. What do you really expect when you stick a Steven Seagal film into your DVD Player??? None of him films - even his best claim to be anything other than mindless action, and as such does what it says on the tin and is enjoyable if you just want undemanding cerebral pleasure.Co-starring various non-entities including Tamara Davies, John Pyper-Ferguson & Julian Stone, Who all actually play their roles to an acceptable standard. From the Writer behind Wesley Snipes' STV flicks '7 Seconds' & 'The Detonator', Produced by 8 People including Seagal Himself & Andrew Stevens who has dozens of Straight to Video Pictures in his repertoire, and Directed by Cinematopgrapher Alexander Gryszynski who does a pretty good job at his first shot at Directing.All in All not the best Film you're ever likely to see, not even the best in it's genre, but it's pretty good if your expectations are low*** out of *****
Ugh!
posted on 22 Jul 2008Steven Seagal returns in Black Dawn.Cool title.I cannot say the same for the movie though.It ranks as the Worst Seagal movie yet.Yes.It is worse than Out for a Kill.Did we really need a sequel to the Forigner that bad?Steven returns as Jonathon Cold.Assassin for hire.This time he is out to stop a group of Terrorists and prevent Nuclier Bomb from hitting Los Angelas with the help of CIA agent Tamara Davies.This idea seems okay.The Jonathon Cold character once again gives the big guy a chance to tarnish his clean-cut cinematic Image.You get the feeling with a decent director and production team this movie could have went somewhere.If this cost 15 million I wanna know where it was spent?It was not spent on the movie?!! The action scenes are not bad.The movie was obviously shot like a Doug Liman flick.Its just that most of the Time Seagal is doubled so much you cannot take the movie seriously whatsoever.The script seems...what script?!Logic is Black Dawned for a dozen low-budget action movies.Seagal is not too bad here for a whole 15 minutes he is engaging then goes about the sleepwalking that he has done for his last 2 movies.Whoever is doing his fighting is doing a commendable job.The light that shines through is Tamara Davies as Cold's sidekick.She has the chops,skills,looks and drive that give Black Dawn a little kick in the action department.How she got in this movie is a riddle.She should be a bigger star.Nicholas Davidoff and John Pyper Feruson are not believable bad guys.Whose idea was it to make a sequel to a bad movie in the first place? It did not set the world on fire to my memory.I can only hope they inject the next Forigner sequel with some class,imagination,Less stunt doubles and a livelier Seagal.If not then leave Jonathon Cold on Ice.
Decent Effort!
posted on 14 Jul 2008Steven Seagal used to be the most consistent action star working as far as quality was concerned. His movies were always great, but I will be the first to admit that they have definitely dipped in quality in the last few years. Now, the good ones are few and far between.Black Dawn is a sequel to "The Foreigner," which is often considered by die-hard Seagal fans as his worst movie. Of course, that was compared to the movies he had been up to that point in time and since then he has made several worse efforts, like "Today You Die" or "Out for a Kill," and now it doesn't seem so bad in retrospect. Still, it seems an odd choice to make a sequel to it.The first good news is that the awkward dubbing of Seagal's voice that has become a trend in his recent efforts is not present here. It seemed to be his own voice throughout the whole movie. Secondly, since it was getting rather ridiculous to watch painfully obvious stunt doubles trying to pass themselves off as Seagal, this movie just throws the fights scenes out the door. There is action, but it's mostly all gun battles. This movie is a lot more plot driven than the usual Seagal effort.The plot focuses on Jonathan Cold who is an ex-CIA CIA undercover officer, (Got that!), who is trying to stop a group of rebellious teenagers from blowing up the city. The whole thing moves swiftly enough and has some good supporting performances. Seagal is also better than usual. He also appears to have cut his hair. When Seagal's hair gets longer it looks really frizzy and unhealthy and it's hard not to be distracted by it. Seriously, it looks like a bad wig sometimes. Also, he has lost a bit of weight since "Belly of the Beast" which is nice. I hope he's trying to get back into shape for the rumored "Under Siege" sequel that is supposed to be in the works. It would be awfully nice to see Casey "f**king" Ryback kicking butt again real soon. If there is one thing to be learned from "Crocodile Dunddee in Los Angelas," its that it is never to late to finish off a trilogy.For now I guess I'll just be waiting patiently. His next movie, "Mercenary of Justice" looks promising enough and his second album comes out soon too. Go Seagal!
A stinker
posted on 14 Jul 2008Steven 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.
You can expect entertainment, Black Dawn delivers it.
posted on 04 Aug 2009Black Dawn is a sequence to The Foreigner, and it's a rare case of a sequel that it's better than the first one, Not saying that The Foreigner was a bad film, it was great, similar to Ronin and brought some terrific action sequences. Black Dawnn works better due to a matter of plot,better written and more involving than the first movie, and also a better cast. I got a feeling Seagal knew that, because you see he tries hard with the material, and Black Dawn gets from him his best performance in years. Tamara Davies is a joy to behold, what a wonderful actress!I have never seen any of the movies she made but after Black Dawn I'll surely look for her next pictures. Her future as an actress is without a doubt a great one, she is only beginning but I am pretty sure she has a great career ahead of her. She reminded me Naomi Watts, in this picture, another brilliant actress who became deservedly a star after The Ring. I'll keep my fingers crossed to see Tamara Davies getting her breakthrough role, too. With her quality as an actress, she also brought the best from Seagal, too. The pair of Tamara Davies and Steven Seagal has great chemistry and they handle well the action scenes. Mr. Seagal's fighting skills are a joy to watch.When you get to see him fighting you just know that it isn't make up deal, the man really understands his craft, he is a martial artist and has degrees in many forms of martial artist, like aikido and judo. I don't know if Mrs. Davies is a martial artist too, but her fighting scenes were wonderfully done and I wouldn't be surprised to hear that she also knows aikido and judo. The story isn't perfect, but you can't ask perfection from a good old fashioned action flick, right?You can expect entertainment and Black Dawn certainly delivers it.