Half Past Dead
2 out of 5 stars
R E V I E W   B Y   R I C H   C L I N E
Half Past Dead Support Shadows: Buy a Poster
Here's yet another deafening, preposterous action movie created for extremely undemanding audiences that don't care about logic and coherence. It's about the deep-undercover FBI agent Sascha (played by a block of wood ... oh sorry, that's Seagal) who, while trying to catch a criminal kingpin, gets "arrested" and sent to the refurbished Alcatraz with his cohort Nick (Rule). Coincidentally, they arrive on the day of the island prison's first execution, of a train robber (Weitz) who stole and hid $200 million in gold bars. Naturally, a disgruntled prison employee (Chestnut) takes this opportunity to break in and kidnap the prisoner to get the gold, taking a Supreme Court Justice (Thorson) as a hostage. But his cunning plan goes wrong when Sascha kicks into gear.

It's so unbelievable (don't get me started), and it all looks so fake (every room in this Alcatraz looks like a movie set), that you don't believe it for a moment. You know none of the good guys are in jeopardy, since fairly constant machine gun fire fails to touch a single person. It just goes on and on, keeping things noisy and busy enough that we stay awake. The filmmaking isn't terrible, just inept and stupid. The acting, on the other hand, is terrible. There are a few decent performers (Weitz, Thorson and even Chestnut and Peeples to a degree), but the film is so over-done that even they come across as cardboard cutouts. The fact that Block of Wood continues to make movies is astonishing, although his fight scenes are the only ones that feel even remotely authentic. The others all look like movie ballet pieces--heavily choreographed dance numbers rather than actual battles. At least it has the requisite silly end-credit sequence (between Kurupt and Mo'Nique) to send us out with a smile on our face.

cert 15 strong violence, language, innuendo 11.Mar.03

dir-scr Don Michael Paul
with Steven Seagal, Morris Chestnut, Ja Rule, Nia Peeples, Bruce Weitz, Claudia Christian, Linda Thorson, Kurupt, Tony Plana, Matt Battaglia, Richard Bremmer, Mo'Nique
release US 15.Nov.02; UK 2.May.03
Columbia
02/US 1h38

And these are the good guys. Three inmates (Michael Taliferro, Ja Rule, Kurupt) face off against the baddies...

seagal chestnut
R E A D E R   R E V I E W S
send your review to Shadows... the good the bad and the deadly Still waiting for your comments ... don't be shy.
© 2003 by Rich Cline, Shadows on the Wall

HOME | AWARDS | NEWS | FESTIVAL | Q&A | ABOUT | TALKBACK