Half Past Dead
Half Past Dead | |
| Director: | Don Michael Paul |
| Cast: | Steven Seagal, Morris Chestnut, Ja Rule |
| Genre: | Film, Action |
The title doesn't refer to falling star Steven Seagal's career but makes good shorthand for this formulaic action dud with a ludicrous plot that keeps getting dumber. Seagal inexplicably plays a Russian (with no accent) undercover FBI agent who gets so close to his quarry (an amusing but unconvincing Ja Rule) that he ends up taking a bullet for him and following him into the slammer--"New Alcatraz," no less. But wait--it's not an undercover cop or prison-escape flick: A team of super-commandos parachutes into the supposedly impenetrable fortress to force a death-row inmate to reveal where he's hidden $200 million in gold. There's lots of breaking glass, explosive fireballs, rapid-fire machine guns, and film edits, plus obligatory slo-mo designed to disguise the lumpy Seagal's farcical martial-arts chops. It all indicates writer/director Don Michael Paul has seen Die Hard and The Rock a lot but has no vision of his own. Not the worst Seagal movie ever, but close enough that it doesn't matter.