Review of Black Dawn (2006) by Annie P — 05 Sep 2012

Steven Seagal isn't the only action movie star to continue making movies long after his prime. The difference is that the rest of them are still pretty charismatic in the twilight of their career. and Seagal has never been that. His early movies were fun because of his fighting skill, and now that that has passed him by, there's not much left.

"Black Dawn" is one of the worst of his newer efforts, a ridiculous and boring thriller with grandiose ambitions on a miniscule budget. Seagal does better with smaller scale projects, and this lofty premise bout terrorists trying to blow up Los Angeles, is just too much for him to pull off. There are too many characters, so much so that their motivations and goals begin to get cloudy and confused. There's a lot going on and none of it is worth following.

Seagal continues to embarrass himself by the obvious use of a stunt double who looks nothing like him in most scenes. The one brief fight scene he has looks like it was filmed while he was in the other room eating a bagel. The horrible CGI used in the finale is appallingly bad when the nuclear device is detonated over the ocean, but the strange thing is that computer effects are used in key scenes to presumably keep the budget down and the aging star safe. Look at the scene on the back of a truck or the helicopter at the end, and it's all phony.

"Black Dawn" is budget filmmaking at its worse, an attempt to create a product because there might be demand for it overseas. It's slow-moving, cheap-looking and will entertain absolutely no one. If you've stuck with Seagal for this long, you deserve better.