So Seagal is Jonathan Cold, a high-level ex-CIA agent who is now a "freelance operative," which sounds like nothing more than a title invented for cheesy action movies for a hero who takes matters into his own hands. "Operative" literally means secret agent, and freelance basically means someone who works for themselves, or someone who occasionally works for other people and organizations but is overall self-employed. <br /><br />Oh, and they all thought that Cold was dead. And in case you forget, notice the incessant repetition of the line "I thought you were dead!"<br /><br />Anyway, you get the idea. Cold is a marksman and an expert in martial arts and nuclear weapons. What a resume! Marksman doesn't really come into play much, but an expert in martial arts and nuclear weapons is just too perfect! One for the action and one for the story, right? This is Action Movie-making 101.<br /><br />The story involves a group of bad guys which, like far too many of Seagal's recent movies, are stupid, boring action baddie clichés, who want to basically destroy the world and start "a new global economy." Yeah, whatever. <br /><br />Black Dawn reveals to the world that there is a nuclear test facility in Pasadena, California. I didn't know that, but then again, I also always thought you had to wear some kind of foil suit to handle raw plutonium, but I guess that's not really true. In this movie, one of the bad guys handles it wearing no safety equipment other than a pair of gloves, and he's even smoking a cigarette. This guy is hardcore!<br /><br />Seagal, unfortunately, just looks like he's not trying anymore. The goal is to get a nuclear weapon away from the bad guys and then away from the populace before it detonates and kills millions of people. <br /><br />We're asked to believe that it would take less than four minutes to get into a helicopter, start it up, take off, and fly out over the ocean and drop the bomb into the ocean and have it sink deep enough to explode without doing any damage. This is a hell of a stretch and is fraught with amazingly bad blue-screen work, but strangely it's the girl's shocked reaction ("What?? ") when Cold tells her to throw the bomb out the window into the action that seems the most ridiculous. Maybe she wanted to keep it?<br /><br />We expect very little from a Seagal movie, especially recent ones. He started his career in gritty, hardcore action movies, peaking with Under Siege, but lately his movies go for more story than they can sustain, resulting in cheesy, talky action schlock with too much bad acting and not enough fighting, which is what Seagal's fans really want to see