Half Past Dead (2002)

User Rating:

4.0/10   

Director:

Don Michael Paul

Writer (WGA):

Don Michael Paul (written by)

Release Date:

15 November 2002 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Crime | Thriller

Tagline:

The Good. The Bad. And the Deadly.

Plot:

This movie tells the story of a man who goes undercover in a hi-tech prison to find out information to help prosecute those who killed his wife. While there he stumbles onto a plot involving a death-row inmate and his $200 million stash of gold.

Plot Keywords:

Prison | FBI | Alcatraz | Death Row | Electric Chair

Awards:

3 nominations

Cast

Steven Seagal	...	Sasha Petrosevitch
Morris Chestnut	...	49er One / Donald Robert Johnson
Ja Rule	...	Nicolas 'Nick' Frazier
Nia Peeples	...	49er Six
Tony Plana	...	Warden El Fuego
Kurupt	...	Twitch
Michael Taliferro	...	Little Joe (as Michael 'Bear' Taliferro)
Claudia Christian	...	Special Agent Ellen Williams
Linda Thorson	...	Judge Jane McPherson
Bruce Weitz	...	Lester McKenna
Michael McGrady	...	Guard Damon J. Kestner
Richard Bremmer	...	Sonny Eckvall
Hannes Jaenicke	...	Agent Hartmann
Matt Battaglia	...	49er Three
Wiliam T. Bowers	...	Alcatraz Guard

Also Known As:

Halbtot - Half Past Dead (Germany)
Lockdown (USA) (working title)
The Rock (USA) (original script title)

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for pervasive action violence, language and some sexual content.

Runtime:

99 min | Finland:95 min (25 fps) (short version) | Finland:106 min (25 fps) (long version)

Country:

Germany | USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital | SDDS

Certification:

Finland:K-15 | Venezuela:PG-13 | Iceland:16 | Malaysia:18SG | USA:PG-13 (certificate #39349) | Australia:M | South Korea:15 | Netherlands:12 | Argentina:13 | Canada:13+ (Quebec) | Canada:AA (Ontario) | France:U | Germany:16 | Norway:15 | Philippines:PG-13 | Singapore:PG | Sweden:15 | UK:15

Filming Locations:

Berlin, Germany

Company:

Franchise Pictures

Trivia:

All indoor prison scenes were shot in an old STASI prison in Berlin/Germany.

Goofs:

Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): 49er One calls out for a rifle as he jumps into the electric chair pit, but his team did not bring any rifles to the island -- only submachine guns.

Quotes:

Nick: [after Sasha's confession, Nick needs the whole truth about his being in Alcatraz] Yo, you need to break a few things down to me.
Sasha: Yeah, what am I doing here? Maintaining my cover, earning your trust.
Nick: [dryly] You already screwed that up.
Sasha: The Bureau thought that if we did time together you might trust me with more sensitive information when we got back out on the streets.
Nick: [puzzled] Ya'll want Sonny that bad?
Sasha: [miserably] My wife's dead because of him. She died when one of his men jacked my car and put four bullets in her chest. You bet your life, I want him that bad.
[...]

Movie Connections:

Features Navy Seals (1990)

Soundtrack:

Bring It On

Half Past Doughnut

Oh dear! What can I say about Half Past Dead? I was really disappointed in it. I was thinking....A Steven Seagal movie! Cool! We'll get to see him kick people and flip people and break bones. We might even get to see him have a stick fight with somebody! Excellent!

However, I was in for a rude awakening. This film can be summed up as follows:

Take an episode of the A-Team, remove the lovable and roguish characters such as Murdoch, Hannibal, Mr T and Face. Then get a writer/director to pen a plot even Ed Wood would be ashamed of and who's too big a fan of The Matrix and John Woo movies for his own good. Throw in a bunch of people with really bad acting ability and who don't have real names. Finally, add in a main star who's getting saggy around the midriff and doesn't appear to be able to do his own stunts anymore.

The result? Half Past Dead. An action movie so ridiculous that it at least made me smile right the way through. The plot holes are stupendously, glaringly large - for example, prisoners who, when the jail is invaded, fight the invaders rather than attempting to escape. Or how about the prison itself, which has an armoury that contains heavy machineguns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers? You also have a helicopter (bearing a striking resemblance to a Huey) with some kind of video game machinegun mounted in the nose.

Then there's Seagal himself. I like the guy. He CAN fight. He's even witty in a way that Jean-Claude Van Damme will never be. But all through the movie I kept hoping for that one great, defining fight scene. Never happened. Instead we got people firing guns a lot and not hitting a whole Hell of a lot. I mean, when someone runs down a narrow corridor and you fire a sub-machinegun at them, there isn't a whole lot of places the bullets can go other than down the corridor and into the target. Yet somehow they miss? Even the A-Team would cringe at this foolishness. And then when it gets to any kind of one-on-one physical stuff, we get treated to a shabby Matrix rip-off, without the benefit of bullet-time. People getting kicked twenty feet through the air and sundry other ludicrous acrobatic nonsense.

C'mon Steven, you're better than this. Your career can't be over. Say it ain't so!

This is instantly forgettable (except I'm forcing myself to remember for the purposes of this review) and if you watch it, try to find it amusing in an A-Team kind of way. But I doubt it'll be high on anyone's "re-watchable" list. Out for Justice this ain't. More like Out to Lunch.