Half Past Dead is a very messy product, and could be one of the worst films of 2003. Hearing how bad this movie is, I had to see, which my mate told me as well. They weren't wrong. We get the kind of non acting or s..t acting from Seagal as we expect. He hasn't improved one iota. The movie is so far fetched, faults a many, which forces the audience to take it as a comedy. That becomes legitimate over a strained end credit sequence, I never expected, where to cure my astonishment, (where I thought I was dreaming) and fuel my amusement, stayed back with a other few. This was also in a much better Seagal vehicle, his previous cinematic one, Exit Wounds. There are some bad performances, but mostly others are good, especially Linda Thorson and the great Tony Plana (Salvador, 187) as the prison warden. Get this, the plots classic, even though illogical. Seagal ends up in prison, purposefully with his convict friend. Part of an undercover operation, he's there to find out who killed his wife. There's also an old guy, about to go to the gas chamber, but has a secret, involving a lot of stashed moolah, some corrupt authorities want badly, where the old codger, awaiting death, stays a resistant SOB. When the prison, Alcatraz, is taken over by them and some outside people, involving a lethal female fetale, who sadly doesn't share a fighting round with Steve, it's Seagal to the rescue. In fact Steve didn't kick much arse in this, believe it or not, which many Seagal fans would of been p...ed. Cinematicaly, Half Past Dead, is the worst film Steve's done. Even at the start, when the bad guys smells Seagal as fishy, again he passes a lie detector test. I swear to you, watch this film just to realize how bad and funny, it is, but somehow being this, still somehow makes it come off better than it should. Good or Bad news, there's a sequel. Not. Seriously "Yes". Half Past Dead is a cool titled movie, emphasis on titled, not movie.

I had always had my opinion about the leading star of this film, and only ever really liked him in Under Siege, but in recent times I decided to give him a chance and try his films, and this was another one of them. Basically car thief Sasha Petrosevitch (Razzie nominated Steven Seagal) is brought in by criminal Nicolas 'Nick' Frazier (rapper Ja Rule) working for crime boss Sonny Eckvall (Richard Bremmer), who apparently killed his wife. During the job however FBI Special Agent Ellen 'EZ' Williams (Claudia Christian) catch the team, and Sascha ends up getting shot, and for eight months he is medically dead, until his recovery finally works, and he is immediately imprisoned in Alcatraz. He joins Nick and the many other dangerous and petty criminal inmates in the infamous prison that has only just been reopened by new charismatic Warden El Fuego (Tony Plana), and the place is equipped with a new state-of-the-art execution chamber. The dead men walking can choose from the five methods of death: gas chamber, lethal injection, electrocution, hanging or firing squad, and the first criminal to face the new facility is gold heist thief Lester McKenna (Bruce Weitz). Watching the execution to see how the system works are Supreme Court Justice Judge June McPherson (Linda Thorson) and Federal Bureau of Prisons head Frank Hubbard (Stephen J. Cannell), but also interested in getting their hands on McKenna is a team of terrorists, called the "49ers". They are led by number one, Donald Robert Johnson (Boyz n the Hood's Morris Chestnut) who wants the stash of gold that has been hidden by the man on death row, and as he won't tell them Johnson is holding the Judge and others ransom to get what they want. Obviously Sascha are trapped inside as well, and they decide to do something about the situation, fighting back, but of course we find out Sascha is actually an undercover cop trying to find Sonny Eckvall. With the help of the other inmates, including Twitch (Kurupt) and Little Joe (Michael 'Bear' Taliferro), and in the end Alcatraz goes back supposedly to its original state, the villain is defeated, and Sascha does rescue the Judge and others. Also starring Nia Peeples as 49er Six, Michael McGrady as Guard Damon J. Kestner and Hannes Jaenicke as Agent Hartmann. Seagal is reasonably okay as the at first unlikely but then obvious hero, and his high kicks certainly make for alright viewing, some of the story was in ways interesting, but overall it is almost a rip-off of The Rock and other similar films, so not much originality, and not the highest amount of satisfaction, a sort of silly action crime thriller. Adequate!

So there's Steven Seagal, and there's a bunch of people that want to kill him because well, just because. There have been so many movies with that exact premise I wonder why I still bother to watch them. I guess it's just that the pure, innocent simplicity to a Seagal movie is very endearing to me. With that said, this movie still kinda blows. I'm okay with the dumb plot about criminals trying to locate 200 million dollars worth of gold (which apparently is just around twenty bars), but I expected some more real action from our main character. All Seagal does is slap some people, and even that is usually done by an obvious double. His acting is also even worse than usual (is that possible?) and his co-stars don't exactly carry the movie either. Maybe because most of them aren't even real actors. Whose idea was it to put Seagal and Ja Rule in an emotional climax? Whoever it was, he's cleaning up aisle three right now. Occasionally there's a good gunfight thrown in the mix, so the movie's not boring all the way through, but it is in fact pretty disappointing.

I saw Half Past Dead back in 2003 and I forgot about it.I've been getting into Seagal again recently and I watched this film a few weeks ago.Most of Seagal's films were Rated R.This is his only PG-13-rated film to date(though "Fire Down Below" was a very tame R, could have easily been PG-13).I was surprised at the low score.Sure this film is no "Above The Law", "Under Siege" or any of Seagal's earlier works, but it is a fairly entertaining action film.It was better than "Fire Down Below", "On Deadly Ground" and the majority of his straight to video fare.The film is about an FBI agent who goes undercover in a new Alcatraz-like prison.A man who buried a large amount of money years ago is to be executed.However some terrorists break into the prison and force the man to tell them where the money is.Part of the film involves the terrorists(led by Morris Chestnut who previously was in Under Siege 2 and plays a fairly good role) playing mind games with the police officers and the hostages, one of whom is a supreme court judge.The other part involves Seagal, Ja Rule and the other prisoners trying to save everybody.Half Past Dead is a fairly underrated and decent enough Seagal film.Too bad that after this, he was reduced to crappy straight to video fare.