What do you get when you team up the cinematographer from the Brian Bosworth classic, Stone Cold, put him in the director's chair, and cast the one and only Steven Seagal as a rogue CIA operative out to save the world? Black Dawn, that's what. Pay attention.

When we first meet Jonathan Cold (Steven Seagal), a former CIA agent who was thought to be dead after an incident in which he was responsible for killing five federal agents, he's busting a criminal mastermind out of a prison hospital. How does he do this? He has his generic team members Photoshop his head onto a security badge, puts on a lab coat, and wanders on in through all the security check points and armed guards. You see, Seagal is so cool that he can make stuff like this look easy. He's the man.

At any rate, once the guy is out of prison we find out that he's an arms dealer and that his brother has hired Cold to spring him from the big house. The arms dealer is so impressed with Cold's work that he hires him on as one of his men, offering him big bucks once he finds out that he's not only apt at busting people out of jail but also an expert in nuclear weapons. This comes in really handy when it turns out that this guy is in the middle of negotiating a deal with some Eastern European terrorists – he plans on trading them a nuke for a big bag of stolen diamonds.

Meanwhile, a CIA agent named Amanda (lovely soap opera starlet Tamara Davies), who was once Cold's protégé when he was still working for the feds, is on the case. She's been busy snapping pictures of everything showing a real talent for hiding behind cars and on rooftops without being spotted despite her noisy camera. When she sees and recognizes Cold, she figures something is up, even though he superiors instantly suspect that he's turned evil. She's not so sure – she knows he was a good man at one point and hopes that he's still got a little bit of that deep down inside his seemingly sinister heart.

Eventually, Amanda gets found out and it comes to pass that Cold isn't evil after all, he's actually working as an operative for a super secret part of the American government and has been involved in this all along because he's the only man who can stop the terrorists from blowing Los Angeles off of the map. Cold and Amanda team up to stop them, but will they be able to prevent the disaster before it's too late? And more importantly, will he get a chance to bang Amanda before the movie ends?

Black Dawn is pretty bad. While it's fun to see Seagal reprise the Jonathan Cold role from 2003's The Foreigner, there's really nothing redeeming about the film. The action scenes, aside from a genuinely good chase scene, are generic and poorly edited to hide the fact that most of the combat is being done not by Seagal but by his very obvious stunt double (made quite apparent by the fact that this guy is in way better shape than our slightly pudgy star). Seagal appears to be trying to channel some sort of DeNiro-Eastwood thing through his performance here, what with the mannerisms and penchant for soft speaking but it only makes him look goofy and uninterested in the material. This is made very obvious when he's forced to deliver lines like 'If you ain't got that, you ain't got shit' and 'That's what I'm talking about!' in some vein attempt to make his character seem hip. It doesn't work. None of it works.

That being said, Tamara Davies is alright in her supporting role and she's certainly fun to look at. While you'll constantly find yourself asking 'what does she see in him' as their relationship blossoms, she's at least able to deliver her lines with enough sincerity that you don't feel the need to laugh at her. The guys who plays the terrorists, sporting such generic names as Sergey and Nicholi, are about as cookie cutter as you can get but they at least attempt to bring some evil and sinister tones to their performances, even if they go over the top a little bit in a few scene (possibly in an attempt to make up for Seagal's complete and utter lack of excitement).

The direction and cinematography is decent enough and Black Dawn looks alright for the most part, though the finale is so laughably bad and so obviously shot against a poorly rendered green screen that it's hard not to snicker at what is supposed to be a serious and intense moment of action and suspense and when Seagal waddles off into the sunset at the end of the film, the tortured hero to the end, it's just the icing on a really crappy cake.

Video:

Black Dawn is presented in a nice 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer that, according to the packaging, has been mastered in high definition. Overall, things do look pretty good on this release. The colors appear to be intentionally muted in a few scenes, likely a stylistic choice on the part of the director or cinematographer, but the black levels are strong and deep. There's a decent level of both foreground and background detail present in the image and there aren't any mpeg compression artifacts. Edge enhancement is present here and there but is never overpowering and while you'll note some aliasing in a couple of spots, it's hardly a big issue.