Stupid. Illogical. Simplistic. Pandering.
And those are its good points.
Half Past Dead is way past bad. And that's not bad as in cool, or bad as in so bad, it's good. Nope, this is just bad as in bad, as in a brainless movie, starring an aging action hero with no concept of his own limitations, about which two points should be noted up front: 1) star Steven Seagal is not shown once in a full-length shot, the better to hide the fact that he's become as big as a house, and about as lithe as one; and 2) for a movie in which the real star is the poor guy who had to round up about a million fake bullets, it's amazing how few of them hit anything they're aimed at.
Seagal, starring in this film only from the neck up, is a Russian-born bad guy (at least that's what his name, Sascha Petrosevitch, suggests, although he must have left his accent back in Moscow) who has become a trusted member of a nasty crime gang. His best bud, Nick (rapper Ja Rule), is the man who got him in good with the local crime boss. He and Sascha are a coupla baaaad customers.
But the first of the movie's endless parade of high-intensity shoot-'em-ups (no more than five minutes seems to separate one from the other) leaves Sascha wounded and Nick on his way upriver for an extended stay at the big house. A few blood transfusions and one titanium knee later, Sascha too is on his way to prison, where he once again meets up with the Nickster, and plenty more gangsta attitude ensues. (One of the film's few bright spots is Seagal's pronounced inability to speak gangsta, which is played to enjoyable comic effect.)
Our boys end up at a revamped Alcatraz, recently turned into a high-security hellhole reserved for only the baddest of the bad, and ruled over by an iron-fisted, tough-talking (but inwardly compassionate and fair) warden nicknamed El Fuego (Tony Plana, not just chewing but also swallowing the scenery). All this plays out just as the new Alcatraz is about to put its first bad guy to death, a thief named Lester (Bruce Weitz) who stole about a ton of U.S. government-owned gold bullion a few years back and has stubbornly refused to reveal where it is.
Then, just as Lester's about to be fried, in parachutes a group of well-armed super-bad guys led by the amoral Donny (Morris Chestnut) and a bodacious unnamed bad girl (Nia Peeples) who's dressed in skintight leather with a hole placed strategically over her stomach muscles (what's the sense in breaking into a high-security prison if you can't ooze sex appeal while doing it?).
They're here to find out Lester's hiding place and wreak a little mayhem. Toward that latter end, they're helped immeasurably by the fact that a Supreme Court justice (Linda Thorson) has stopped by to watch the execution.
Things look bad for the good guys, until it turns out that one of the inmates is not a thug after all, but really an FBI plant. And here's where the fun begins, and the bullets really start flying, as the agent decides to arm all of Alcatraz's prisoners to help get the bad guys (wonder what FBI manual he read?).
Oh, where does one start attacking the numbing badness of this film? One could point out that it's nothing but a rehash of another Seagal film, the far-better Under Siege. One could note that about a dozen things happen here that make absolutely no sense (if Lester's as reformed as he says he is, for example, why doesn't he just say where the gold is?). One could scratch one's head, wondering why none of the actors seem to realize the junk they're in; instead, they act as though the script is just one step removed from Shakespeare (Chestnut, especially, should know better). One could ask the unanswerable question: When you're armed with a machine gun, and you're aiming at as wide a target as Steven Seagal, how on earth could you miss?
Or one could see what else is playing at the multiplex. Please.
Half Past Dead
Starring Steven Seagal, Morris Chestnut, Ja Rule
Written and directed by Don Michael Paul
Released by Sony Pictures
Rated PG-13 (Language, unceasing mayhem)
Time 99 minutes
SUN SCORE *