![]() Regrettably, aiming for the lowest common denominator does not do much to reverse this movie’s lack of appeal. Starting to some wear and tear around the edges, and looking rather tired, a paunchy Steven Segal is stiffer than usual within his already narrow acting range, and the supporting cast does not try to do any better. Perhaps this cute snippet should have been shown at the very beginning and the rest left in the cutting room floor altogether. Don’t get up yet, though, as a short snappy dialogue takes place between one of the inmates and his visiting sweetheart through the glass partition while the credits are rolling. Which leads us to act three, where the audience is required to suspend whatever vestiges of belief they’ve held so that final accounts can be settled and the movie can be neatly wrapped up. When the dense smoke finally clears, all that is left is a high tech prison in shambles with more holes than Swiss cheese and dead bodies all over the place. In the middle of all this chaos, the judge is taken hostage and used as a negotiating tool, the priest is killed, Seagal reveals that he has been a deep cover FBI agent all along, and the rest of the inmates break into the armory, grabbing anything they can get - from side-arms to heavy machine-guns and rocket launchers. From that point, the action turns into a frantic free for all. To the kidnappers’ chagrin, their elaborate plans go awry when the chopper coming back to pick them up crashes into the prison in bad weather. Also just arrived to witness the execution is the presiding judge, Justice June McPherson (Linda Thorson), who had sentenced Lester to death at the original trial, several FBI agents, and members of the press. His chief lieutenant is 49er Six (Nia Peeples) who is as beautiful as she is deadly with her gun and martial arts skills. The ruthless mercenaries are led by Donny/49er One (Morris Chestnut) a blaspheming psychopath who claims God is dead and shoots the prison’s priest to show that he means business. Unknown to anyone present, however, a team of well trained, focused, criminals is about to break into the impregnable island and attempt to kidnap the death row inmate to find out where the gold was hidden before he takes his secret to the grave. ![]() Lester is about to be killed for his role in the death of several treasury agents during a heist of 200 million dollars in gold bars several years ago. On that same day, Lester (Bruce Weitz) is scheduled at his own request to be the first death row inmate to be executed in the new high tech chamber. ![]() Alcatraz has now reopened as a state-of-the-art penal facility featuring a high tech death chamber that allows condemned inmates to choose their own method of execution. The second act opens with the two convicts finding each other again in the slammer, and the location happens to be, you guessed it, the overexposed Alcatraz off the San Francisco coast. Shortly thereafter, Nick gets involved in a fierce shoot out with the FBI and Seagal is killed by an ensuing explosion, only to be revived almost miraculously about a half-hour later by the paramedics, and later sent to jail. The first of three crudely partitioned acts introduces Steven Segal as Sascha Petrosevitch, a Russian freelancer (less the accent) being recruited into a crime syndicate with the help of Nick Frazier (Ja Rule), his long time buddy. Not even the frenzied attempts to capitalize on every recent crime/action thriller/adventure – from THE ROCK to THE MATRIX to UNDER SEIGE – are enough to raise this ear splitting, bullet ridden, unmitigated mess from what will probably be a well deserved quick demise. If there ever was a movie made by formula, HALF PAST DEAD is a perfect example. In a world that is already reeling from all the violence spilling onto every area of life, this is yet another desensitizing offering for an increasingly jaded society rather than an exciting movie experience Content: More like a long running arcade video game than a feature film, HALF PAST DEAD could conceivably be tolerated as shock therapy. Will they succeed, or will their elaborate plans go awry? However, a team of well trained criminals attempts to break into the impregnable island and kidnap Lester to find out where the gold was hidden. Another convict, Lester, is scheduled to be the first death row inmate to be executed in the new chamber for his role in killing treasury agents during a heist of 200 million dollars in gold. The two convicts find each other again in the Alcatraz prison, now reopened with a high tech death chamber. Nick gets involved in a fierce shootout with the FBI, and Sascha gets killed, only to be revived and sent to jail. HALF PAST DEAD stars Steven Segal as Sascha, a Russian recruited into a crime syndicate with the help of Nick Frazier, his long time buddy.
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