Starring: Steven Seagal, Morris Chestnut, Ja Rule,
Kurupt, Bruce Weitz, Nia Peeples, Tony Plana, Michael Taliferro, Claudia
Christian, Linda Thorson
Director: Don Michael Paul
Action Directors: Xiong Xin Xin, Art Camacho
Half Past Dead is a particular interesting, in that it marks a few milestones in Steven Seagal’s career while concurrently being one of Seagal’s more uneventful movies made up to that point. For one, it is the only PG-13 movie in all of Seagal’s filmography. I’m sure it was made on the notion that if Exit Wounds, Seagal’s previous effort and a comeback to theatrically-released movies, could make decent bank with a small budget and heavy urban hip-hop influences, then a PG-13 film would be able to reach an even wider audience. The result was quite the opposite: it was a flop and condemned Seagal to make direct-to-video films for the rest of his career. The only exception was his supporting turn as the main villain in the 2010 film Machete.
The movie follows the exploits of a professional car thief named Sasha Petrosevitch (Seagal), who employs his services to a criminal named Nick Frazier (rapper Ja Rule). Frazier is something of a middle man in the operation ran by Russian mob heavy Sonny Ekvall. When the FBI raids Frazier’s chop shop, Sasha takes a bullet while trying to protect his colleague. Some months later, Petrosevitch shows up at a newly-opened Alcatraz as a prisoner, much to the surprise of Frazier, who had been arrested during said raid and is now serving time there as well.
Also showing up at the prison is federal criminal named Lester McKenna, who has been on death row for some time and is now ready for execution. McKenna had stolen gold from a U.S. Treasury train, getting several agents killed in the process. His reluctance to tell the government where he hid he bullion pissed off enough people in high places that they rallied quite hard to get him the chair—I must point out that in this alternate universe, New Alcatraz offers five different methods of execution, arguments about cruel and unusual punishment be damned! On hand for the execution is a Supreme Court Chief Justice (Linda Thorson), the same one who read his sentence.
In a fashion not too unlike The Rock[1], a band of terrorists led by a corrupt government official (Morris Chestnut, in his second collaboration with Seagal) take cover the prison. Their mission is to coax the location of the missing gold out of McKenna, taking advantage of his having been “born again” while waiting out his sentence. I mean, if one now believes in God and wants to repair his wrongs on the eve of his own death, then saving the life of a Chief Justice and maybe other innocent people may be the way to go, right? Well, it does not take long before Seagal is on to what is happening and arms his fellow inmates in a running firefight against the terrorists.
If you watch the Making-Of Videos found on most DVD copies of Half Past Dead, you might be amused to see the people involved droning on about how this was a “new breeed of action film” and celebrating the opportunity to work with “iconic” action star Steven Seagal. While hyperbole is expected when promoting a new product, one has to wonder if they even believed in their own hype for even a minute. The urban action theme had already been done several times before, by Seagal (Exit Wounds) and others (Blade; Rush Hour; and Romeo Must Die). Nor was Hong Kong-style fight choreography still a novelty in 2002. And as Seagal had become of something of a legend in the realm of “actors who are hard to work with”,--not to mention the fact that he was already teetering on the precipice of theatrical recognition, just a slight push from plunging into the depths of direct-to-video mediocrity--I cannot quite see what the cause for enthusiasm was for those involved.
Half Past Dead is a big mess of an action film. There are far too many supporting characters, whom include the villains, to the good FBI agents following the hostage situation at the prison, the hostages, the Warden (Tony Plana), not to mention the prisoners themselves. One of those is played by Long Beach rapper Kurupt (of the Dogg Pound), whose obnoxious performance plays on as many black “gangsta” stereotypes as one can fit into his limited screen time. Seagal is his usual mumbling self; anyone expecting more from him by this point should really rethink their approach to cinema. The other actors give professional performances, but are ultimately overshadowed by the silly, overstuffed script.
Much like the Under Siege films, Seagal’s Sasha Petrosevitch just happens to be the right person in the right place at the right time when there is a terrorist attack. We do eventually learn that Sasha is an undercover FBI agent—did anyone actually think overwise? What this means is that Sasha is better at hand-to-hand combat that men who are younger, stronger, and more nimble than he is, not to mention a better marksman, weapons expert, and all-around bad-ass. Sadly, the action is fairly limited, with Seagal getting only one real opportunity to show off his aikido skills. Hong Kong veteran Xiong Xin Xin choreographs that fight scene, which is pretty good, if short lived. Xiong had also worked in Hollywood on The Musketeer and Simon Sez.
Xiong also choreographs a fight sequence between Ja Rule and Nia Peeples of Fame fame (heh). Peeples did her own wire stunts for the scene, which is reminiscent of a similar claustrophobic sequence in Bryan Singer’s X-Men[2]. There is also brief scuffle between Ja Rule and the prison guards, which has the hallmarks of a Hong Kong fight, including punches and pushes that knock a person back several feet. The rest of the action, staged by Art Camacho, is standard, uninspired gunplay with the occasional post-John Woo stylistic flourish. I cannot tell you how silly it is to see Kurupt and another stuntman jumping off a balcony is slow motion, criss-crossing in front of each other, and firing their pistols as they fall. Camacho had worked on numerous straight-to-video films throughout the 90s, working with greats like Don “The Dragon” Wilson (Cyber Tracker 2 and Bloodfist VII), Gary Daniels (Rage), and Jeff Wincott (Last Man Standing).
Most of the action is uninspired, save two fights, which are decent, if derivative. Then you get to the finale and it becomes clear that the production ran out of money. Instead of a final fight, or a one-on-one shootout, the film climaxes with Steven Seagal (and his stunt double) jumping out of a helicopter and skydiving to save a major character. And that’s that. No crazy stunts. No physics-defying falls. No death-defying landings and subsequent rolling down an active volcano. Just a brief skydiving sequence. If that does not exemplify how wrong-headed this movie is, then I do not know what does.
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