Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
Steven Seagal's Half Past Dead is set in Alcatraz, and after 100 minutes of violence, explosions and just plain silliness, you'll feel imprisoned.
By PHILIP BOOTH, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published November 14, 2002
Half past dumb is more like it.
Steven Seagal, everybody's favorite cardboard action hero, is the star and co-producer of Half Past Dead, a noisy, bloody, extended shoot-em-up posing as human drama.
The masquerade doesn't work.
The debut feature from television director and actor Don Michael Paul is just as sophisticated and compelling as anything else involving Seagal -- that is, not at all. Fans of the lethal lug, a martial-arts expert turned screen star of few words, doubtless will remain loyal.
This time, Seagal has grabbed a character with a back story that's exceedingly silly, even by his standards. Sascha Petrosevitch is an FBI agent so committed to bringing down a crime lord, and in the process of avenging the death of his wife, that he works undercover as a car thief, takes bullets for the cause and goes to prison. The title refers to Sascha's amazing return to life after being given up for dead.
The agent's new home is no regular joint: It's Alcatraz, reopened after four decades despite its reputation as a onetime bastion of cruel and unusual punishment. Why ask why? "Alcatraz is a bad place for bad people," one official says.
A surly guard demonstrates the new oldfangled philosophy that rules the place, exchanging blows with Sascha and his criminal friend Nick Frazier (rapper Ja Rule, of The Fast and the Furious) as the men are checked into the maximum-security prison. The warden (Cuban-born character actor Tony Plana) calls himself El Fuego ("The Fire") and issues a warning: "You think you're hard? I'm harder. You think you're tough? I'm tougher."
As if Sascha's self-imposed sentence wasn't tough enough, he's required to save the day when another criminal mastermind arrives on the scene. Donny (Morris Chestnut, The Best Man), leader of a group of mercenaries known as "the 49ers," uses helicopters and high-tech weaponry to raid Alcatraz. As prison attacks go, this one is fairly dazzling.
The commandos, including sexy-but-tough accomplice 49er Six (Nia Peeples), plan to force death-row inmate Lester (Bruce Weitz) to reveal the location of $200-million worth of gold, stolen in a robbery that went awry. Just like in real life, a Supreme Court justice, June McPherson (Linda Thorson), is on hand for the execution. The judge makes a handy hostage, and Donny vows to kill her and the other observers unless Lester gives up his secret. To demonstrate his seriousness, he shoots a priest.
From there, Half Past Dead goes straight past pointless, descending into bullet exchanges, hand-to-hand combat and explosions. Kurupt, a West Coast rapper best known as one half of Tha Dogg Pound, is funny as a loose-cannon convict, but his film debut mostly gets buried under all the other nonsense.
Grade: D+
Director: Don Michael Paul
Cast: Steven Seagal, Morris Chestnut, Ja Rule, Nia Peeples, Tony Plana, Kurupt
Screenplay: Don Michael Paul
Rating: PG-13; violence, profanity
Running time: 100 min.