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The CIA should hire Steven Seagal...

so he wouldn't be able to make movies about being in the CIA or being ex-CIA. If he did they could make him "disappear" for blowing his cover

Black Dawn is yet another Seagal action flick where he's an ex-CIA operative (or is he?) trying to foil a terrorist operation with only the help of his female sidekick and ex-CIA computer hacker friend. Black Dawn tries to confuse us at first since it appears that Seagal is helping the evil when he breaks out the head of the local Australian mafia and starts working for them. The Los Angeles arm of the Australian mafia is making a deal with Icelandic terrorists to sell them an nuclear bomb. Watching the mafia are two CIA agents set up in the mannequin factory next door: female sidekick and token black guy. When token black guy is killed and female sidekick is taken hostage, Seagal has to blow his cover to say the girl, and its a race to assemble the nuclear bomb and set it off.

The problems and gaps in logic that kept me from enjoying this movie where:

• The fuel for the nuclear bomb is Plutonium. To get the Plutonium out of a Plutonium Disposal Plant, a CIA (everyone in this movie is either CIA, Mafia, or terrorist) scientist smuggles it out in his coffee mug. He then takes out a vial of liquid Plutonium and puts it in a small box. The problems with this are:
  1. While Plutonium can be dissolved, this wouldn't make it weapons grade.
  2. While you don't need a lot of Plutonium to make a bomb, you still need between 10 to 16 kg. His little box held a few ounces.
  3. Handling Plutonium with just a pair of gloves will kill you from radiation poisoning.
• The fight scene (I can only remember one) was horribly cut and didn't make any sense. It had Seagal on his back and a CIA agent (a bad one) ready to stomp his face, or it was Seagal standing and the agent on his back. It was that hard to tell. Then some body doubles kicked each other and someone runs away. Basically having three quick cuts of something makes it one of the worst fight scenes I've ever seen.
• We are led to believe at the end of the movie that Seagal and female sidekick have a three day sex romp before she reports back to CIA headquarters after a nuclear bomb exploded. Taking three days to report in after a nuclear explosion (its on the cover so its not a spoiler) seems more plausible than female sidekick being attracted to Seagal.
• The blue scene effects looked like they were from the fifties.

I don't recommend watching Black Dawn, but if you do, make sure to check out the special feature "Interview with Steven Seagal". In it he shares his wisdom about life and movie making. He also does the entire interview in the same speaking voice as ever movie he's ever made, showing you just how little he tries to act.

El Chupacabra

When the director calls cut, I'm pretty sure Segal is already two bites into a ham sandwich at the caterers table.

Yeah, second review! But seriously, this movie was entertainingly bad. I promise to add my thoughts, but only after I get over the idea of a women having sex with Steven Segal. It's like making love to a cold steel mechanical bull except the tail is really Segal's hair. No foreplay, no cuddling, no talking. Don't even look at him! That's not how Segal rolls.

One day passes...

Okay, I'm back. And yes, this movie is still bad. It did seem to have a competent East European director. I almost wish he had more money to work with. At least he could afford realistic blanks for the guns, several explosions, and a terrible looking, but hilarious computer generated nuclear explosion. The plot was a little out there; a gang of trendy Icelandic diamond thieves/terrorists steal diamonds in Antwerp to buy a nuclear device from the Autralian mafia in located in a large abandoned  warehouse in California. Still with me? Well, as Ebert said, Segal is ex-CIA (is someone wishing they had picked a different career?) and he is so bad-ass that he doesn't even need to do his own fight scenes, reload his gun ever, or give a shit about anything. I must say I am sick of yet still loving Segal's I-am-the-baddest-ass-to-ever-walk-the-earth attitude. He didn't even do much fighting in this one and relied on his slow, monotone delivery of lines to move the plot forward. When the director calls cut, I'm pretty sure Segal is already two bites into a ham sandwich at the caterers table. Thank god for the Icelandic terrorists with their bleach-blond hair, scruffy goatees and tight, stone-wash jeans.

In the end, this movie was  fun to watch for the porrly done special effects, stunts, and acting. What Ebert describes as one of the most terrible fight scenes ever seemed to be shots of Segal standing mixed with ones of a stuntman's leg kicking someone in the head. Why you say? Because there is no way Segal has been able to lift his leg farther than his knee for at least 10 years.

The fight scene on top of the dump truck is also a classic. Not only does it feature blue screen special effects from an episode of the Dukes of Hazzard, but the driver of the truck, an innocent civilian, is shot in the chest, but somehow continues to drive between the lines until Segal tosses him onto the hood of a car. Segal doesn't know CPR, he only knows death.

Eventually we end up with the big revelation that some of Amercian's own are at the heart of the conspiracy to blow up a nondescript office tower in Los Angeles. They were mearly using the Icelandic terrorists and Australian mafia for their own ends. Ohhhh! That makes sense...Not! Well, the time in the nuclear weapon containing suitcase starts to count down and Segal, having pursuing his helicopters license and not an engineering degree, is unable to defuse it. Lucky for him, someone left the door to the roof unlocked and there's a helicopter with the engine running sitting there. Despite the bomb having 4 minutes or so to go, Segal and his femal sidekick manage to make it out over the pacific with LA not far behind. How deep does the ocean have to be to contain a nuclear blast? According to the Segal Nuclear Safety Handbook, 1000 feet should do. They drop the suitcase and before it has a chance to sink more than a few hundred feet, it explodes causing the helicopter's cabin to light up and tilt forward 5-10 degrees. Segal really sells the powerful blast with the constipated look on his face. I'm not really sure what a nuclear blast would do, but the one in the movie, quoted as a 10-15 megaton yield, would probably take the helicopter out and destory or at least irradiate most of downtown LA. Instead, a few Dolphins lose all their hair.

All in all, a good romp.

Charles Bronson

SEAGAL GETS LAZIER AND LAZIER EACH MOVIE.

WHAT IF I TOLD YOU GUYS THAT THIS MOVIE WAS A STEVEN SEAGAL MOVIE AND HE DOESN'T PLAY AN EX-CIA PERSON?  YEAH LIKE YOU'RE GOING TO BELIEVE THAT.  OF COURSE HE IS EX-CIA AGAIN, WHAT ELSE DOES HE PLAY?  AND YES IT IS JUST AS BAD AS ALL HIS OTHER BILLION EX-CIA MOVIES.  BUT I FIND WITH EACH MOVIE HE MAKES HE IS GETTING MORE LAZIER. FOR EXAMPLE, IN ONE SCENE SEAGAL AND ANOTHER CIA CHICK ARE FLEEING THE BAD GUYS IN A DUMP TRUCK WHEN SUDDENLY THE BRAKES GO ON SEAGAL (WHAT ARE THE ODDS).  EVEN WITH SEAGAL'S FOOT OFF THE ACCELERATOR THE SPEED STAYS THE SAME AND I GUESS THERE WAS NO EMERGENCY BRAKE IN DUMP TRUCKS.  SO THEY HAD TO JUMP OUT OF THE MOVING TRUCK.  YOU SEE THE CHICK JUMP OUT  LIKE A WIGGLING FISH AND SHE SMACKS HER HEAD ON THE GROUND AS BADLY AS YOU COULD GET AND SHE ROLLS AROUND FIFTY YARDS DOWN THE ROAD.  SO YOU WOULD THINK SHE IS EITHER DEAD WITH A BROKEN SKULL OR IS UNCONSCIOUS WITH A SEVERE CONCUSSION AND SOME BROKEN BONES.  NOPE SHE GETS UP WITHOUT EVEN A FRIGGING SCRATCH.  BUT TO TOP THAT OFF FATTY SEAGAL IS ALREADY STANDING OVER HER BEFORE SHE GETS OFF THE GROUND.  YOU NEVER WITNESS FATTY JUMP OUT OF THE TRUCK.  DOES THIS MOVIE SOUND REALISTIC YET?  THE OTHER EXAMPLE WAS AT THE END WHEN THE TWO WINNERS AGAIN GET A HOLD OF THE NUCLEAR BOMB AND NEED TO DISPOSE OF IT SO NO ONE GETS HURT.  THEY GRAB IT IN SOME OFFICE BUILDING WHICH HAS AT LEAST SIXTY FLOORS IN IT.  THERE IS A TIMER ON THE BOMB AND I BELIEVE THEY HAD LESS THAN FIVE MINUTES TO GET RID OF THIS THING.  THEY TAKE THE ELEVATOR ALL THE WAY UP TO THE BALCONY, JUMPS IN A HELICOPTER,AND  STARTS THE HELICOPTER IN SECONDS WITH ENOUGH SPEED AND FLIES OFF WITH THREE MINUTES TO SPARE.  THEY FLY TO SOME LARGE BODY OF WATER, DROPS THE BOMB IN THE WATER AND FLIES AWAY.  THE NUCLEAR BOMB EVENTUALLY GOES OFF AND ALL IT DOES TO THE HELICOPTER IS SHAKES IT A BIT AND FATTY SEAGAL JUST LEANS AHEAD A LITTLE BIT FOR HIS BIGGEST STUNT OF THE MOVIE.  LAZY LAZY LAZY.  I AM GLAD I KNOW THAT NUCLEAR BOMBS DO NOTHING BIG FOR EXPLOSIONS WHEN THROWN IN WATER.

OVERALL ANOTHER TYPICAL SEAGAL MOVIE, WHICH MEANS BAD AND POINTLESS.