Of the action stars that have been forced into the realm of direct-to-video since their heyday passed in the late 90s, Steven Seagal has to be the laziest. At least Dolph Lundgren has moved on to try his hand at directing some of his films (The Russian Specialist was pretty frigging awesome) and Jean-Claude Van Damme seems to be trying to make entertaining movies whereas Seagal is just showing up and putting in the least amount of effort possible just so he can release one or two flicks a year and collect a paycheque. This might be the reason that, of the three, he wasn't invited to take part in the retro throwback action series The Expendables.

Black Dawn gives us a prime example of Seagal's lack of ambition as he's constantly overshadowed by his co-stars. Of course, this might be because he only was on set for 18 of the 30 day shooting schedule forcing director Alexander Gruszysnki to resort to filming most of his action sequences with an obvious stand-in. When even the two martial arts scenes that are scattered amongst all the gunfire relies on a double, and remember Seagal was known for his Aikido skills, it's a sad state of affairs indeed. Too bad because there are a few competently staged moments here and the plot, though incredibly muddled and trying too hard to be complex, has more going on than his typical fare.

After a credits sequence that almost feels like a mad bomber remix track (there's snippets of dialogue being constantly repeated on the soundtrack) we're thrown into the middle of an armoured car robbery that results in the theft of a heavily guarded briefcase. At the same time, ex-CIA agent Jonathan Cold (Seagal) has been hired to help stage a jail break of the head of some criminal thugs. There's also a subplot where CIA agent Amanda (Tamara Davies) is keeping tabs on it all and, as it turns out, was trained by Cold back in the day.

From there the script by Martin Wheeler does its damndest to get even more twisty by introducing way too many characters for a DTV actioner as we have Cold stuck in the middle of the CIA, our weapons dealing baddies, and a terrorist group who are trying to steal plutonium in order to bomb the heck out of Los Angeles. It falls to Cold and Amanda, who he saved from a shootout between our dealers and terrorists, to try and stop L.A. from being wiped off the map.

Going into Black Dawn, I had no idea it was meant to be a sequel to 2003's The Foreigner. I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter that I haven't seen the original as Seagal plays the same one-note character he does every time. However, I have to admit this isn't nearly as bad as his other efforts like The Keeper and Into the Sun but, I have a sneaky suspicion, that's because he spends most of the flick on the backburner to the shenanigans of John Pyper-Ferguson as our sarcastic main baddie out for revenge and Davies' tough CIA agent who gets to do the brunt of the action during a pretty decent hotel shootout. It just blew my mind that he couldn't even be bothered to do his own martial arts scenes - even the sped up blows of some of his other fare is better than one's that are shot so tightly to try and distract us from the fact it's a fill-in.

Seagal's lack of commitment to this helps his performance as he's not here enough to irritate me with his wooden line delivery and I have to admit that Pyper-Ferguson is pretty good when going after Cold for killing his brother. Everyone else is kind of going through the motions but, thankfully, there's never a scene with Davies looking lustfully at her former mentor.

Despite having a few fairly enjoyable action moments (like a shootout that ends with a garbage truck bulldozing through various other cars before smashing a baddie's vehicle into an explosive tank of gas), Black Dawn is just another cheaply made and poorly written effort that suffers from its makers being way more committed to it than its star. (Chris Hartley, 11/26/14)

Directed By: Alexander Gruszynski.
Written By: Martin Wheeler.

Starring: Steven Seagal, Tamara Davies, John Pyper-Ferguson, Julian Stone.