What happened to this movie? This latest Seagal D.T.V effort had high hopes and falls short in a big way. This film starts out solid with Seagal breaking an arms dealer out of prison posing as a doctor. Lurking in the background are these terrorists planning to blow L.A. sky high...and the arms dealer plans on trading plutonium with the terrorists for diamonds. Staking out all this is Tamara Davies taking photos of Seagal and the arms dealer. Her cover gets blown as does Seagal's as it comes to pass that Seagal is working for some high level, unknown part of the government as he reprises his Jonathan Cold character from 2002's lackluster "The Foreigner". Sounds promising, and for a D.T.V it is shot nicely. As a viewer this Seagal flick appears to be his best film since "Half Past Dead". Lots of action, gunfights, explosions, etc. The truck chase is well done. As the film heads towards its awful conclusion, 1 hour & 25 minutes into the movie as a Seagal fan one should be pleased with the exception of a horrible staircase scene in which the camera focuses in on Seagal's stunt double who is wearing a lighter shade of the same suit Seagal is wearing in other scenes. Then comes the helicopter sequence, which shot with a blue screen background, was the most awful display of special effects I have ever seen. Early 80's B-movies had better FX than this, and this didn't have to be. I have to wonder did no one in post production see this in the editing room? If you don't have the budget for the digital effects, why not change the script for an alternate ending? I gave this a 5 out of 10 for the beginning and middle, but the final act made me cringe.
Review of Black Dawn
