Imagine a film executive looking at the Lethal Weapon duo of Mel Gibson and Danny Glover and saying 'Let's copy that formula, except make it suck.' Seagal is fat and tired and is too old for this shit, Ja Rule tries to look menacing and crazy eyed but just looks and sounds stupid. What happened Steven?

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!

The only bad part of this film is Steven Seagal,who now is old and fat so 1star off.Otherwise pure fantasy rush like the older more fit Seagal flicks.Who cares about plot in a good Seagal flick? Here he plays a DEEP FBI undercover agent,Sasha Petrosevitch, who becomes tight with Ja Rule as Nicolas 'Nick' Frazier as a way to get to the guy that killed his wife.Along the way they wind up in Alcatraz now run by Tony Plana as Warden El Fuego who is about to execute Bruce Weitz as Lester McKenna who is to die for a gold robbery of 200 million that left 5 federal agents dead.From there the plot really goes wild as you'd expect in a pure action flick.Add Morris Chestnut as bad guy 49er One / Donald Robert Johnson and Nia Peeples as sexy badass 49er Six and Seagals boss Claudia Christian as Special Agent Ellen Williams and a once really sexy from my youth Linda Thorson (tv series the avengers) but now a older woman as Judge Jane McPherson and good supporting actors, what more do you want??Oh even a closing credits for laughs scene with Kurupt and Mo'Nique. Released in 2002 it only runs 98 minutes.I can't get Ima bang by DMX out of my head.

When this film hit theaters Steven Seagal still had a presence on the big screen. After this film, he has only made small screen films. In seeing this film it is very easy to see why. Bluntly put: In "Half Past Dead" there is not the faintest glimmer of anything that slightly resembles something original. The only real good thing about this film is the catchy title (arguably good for a straight forward action flick) and somewhat clever tagline that references one the best all time films, both of which are probably the only reason this film made it to the big screen.When watching this film you can see plenty of ironies. The set pieces are good enough for a big screen film, but the editing and cinematography omit key seconds that would normally show such things as blood in order to secure the "commercially safe" PG-13 rating. Roger Ebert's point about this was golden. The lack of profanity seems odd since the movie is all about violent criminals. The supposed star shows not one bit of muscle due to his wearing a trench coat. The opening scene has the hero and his buddy driving as if they are being chased only they are not being chased and due to that editing mentioned earlier it looks like people are not shooting at anything. What's the point of all this? Even the main villain has one of the most ridiculous deaths that is nothing like a big cop out for a finale.What does heroes escaping in a car from nothing, people shooting at nothing and the hero and villain of an action film not even having one fight all add up to? The answer is hard to pinpoint, but it is even worse than your typical direct-to-DVD action movie that has no stars in it. At least those movies don't cheat you out of what you want to see: violence. And if a movie shows violence, it might as well show it in full. Since showing people getting shot but as long as there is no blood is seemingly "appropriate" for kids, is simply absurd. And the results as displayed here are Full Past Ridiculous. --- 2/10BsCDb classification: Ages 13+ -- violence