Half Past Dead (2002)

Note des utilisateurs:

4.0/10   

Réalisateur:

Don Michael Paul

Scénariste (WGA):

Don Michael Paul (written by)

Release Date:

15 novembre 2002 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Crime | Thriller

Accroche:

The Good. The Bad. And the Deadly.

Plot:

This movie tells the story of a man who goes undercover in a hi-tech prison to find out information to help prosecute those who killed his wife. While there he stumbles onto a plot involving a death-row inmate and his $200 million stash of gold.

Plot Keywords:

Prison | FBI | Alcatraz | Death Row | Electric Chair

Awards:

3 nominations

Avis des utilisateurs:

Half Past Doughnut

Ensemble

Steven Seagal	...	Sasha Petrosevitch
Morris Chestnut	...	49er One / Donald Robert Johnson
Ja Rule	...	Nicolas 'Nick' Frazier
Nia Peeples	...	49er Six
Tony Plana	...	Warden El Fuego
Kurupt	...	Twitch
Michael Taliferro	...	Little Joe (as Michael 'Bear' Taliferro)
Claudia Christian	...	Special Agent Ellen Williams
Linda Thorson	...	Judge Jane McPherson
Bruce Weitz	...	Lester McKenna
Michael McGrady	...	Guard Damon J. Kestner
Richard Bremmer	...	Sonny Eckvall
Hannes Jaenicke	...	Agent Hartmann
Matt Battaglia	...	49er Three
Wiliam T. Bowers	...	Alcatraz Guard

Autre(s) titre(s):

Halbtot - Half Past Dead (Germany)
Lockdown (USA) (working title)
The Rock (USA) (original script title)
Les coulisses de la mort (Canada: French title) [fr]
Mission Alcatraz (France) [fr]

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for pervasive action violence, language and some sexual content.

Durée:

99 min | Finland:95 min (25 fps) (short version) | Finland:106 min (25 fps) (long version)

Pays:

Germany | USA

Langue:

Anglais

Couleur:

Couleur

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Son:

Dolby Digital | SDDS

Classification:

Finland:K-15 | Venezuela:PG-13 | Iceland:16 | Malaysia:18SG | USA:PG-13 (certificate #39349) | Australia:M | South Korea:15 | Netherlands:12 | Argentina:13 | Canada:13+ (Quebec) | Canada:AA (Ontario) | France:U | Germany:16 | Norway:15 | Philippines:PG-13 | Singapore:PG | Sweden:15 | UK:15

Emplacements De Pelliculage:

Berlin, Germany

Company:

Franchise Pictures

Anecdotes:

All indoor prison scenes were shot in an old STASI prison in Berlin/Germany.

Goofs:

Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): 49er One calls out for a rifle as he jumps into the electric chair pit, but his team did not bring any rifles to the island -- only submachine guns.

Guillemet:

Sasha: [Sasha talks to Nick in the prison] Well, for the record. I couldn't have done it without you.

Movie Connections:

Edited into Half Past Dead 2 (2007) (V)

Soundtrack:

Smartbomb

Half Past Doughnut

Oh dear! What can I say about Half Past Dead? I was really disappointed in it. I was thinking....A Steven Seagal movie! Cool! We'll get to see him kick people and flip people and break bones. We might even get to see him have a stick fight with somebody! Excellent!

However, I was in for a rude awakening. This film can be summed up as follows:

Take an episode of the A-Team, remove the lovable and roguish characters such as Murdoch, Hannibal, Mr T and Face. Then get a writer/director to pen a plot even Ed Wood would be ashamed of and who's too big a fan of The Matrix and John Woo movies for his own good. Throw in a bunch of people with really bad acting ability and who don't have real names. Finally, add in a main star who's getting saggy around the midriff and doesn't appear to be able to do his own stunts anymore.

The result? Half Past Dead. An action movie so ridiculous that it at least made me smile right the way through. The plot holes are stupendously, glaringly large - for example, prisoners who, when the jail is invaded, fight the invaders rather than attempting to escape. Or how about the prison itself, which has an armoury that contains heavy machineguns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers? You also have a helicopter (bearing a striking resemblance to a Huey) with some kind of video game machinegun mounted in the nose.

Then there's Seagal himself. I like the guy. He CAN fight. He's even witty in a way that Jean-Claude Van Damme will never be. But all through the movie I kept hoping for that one great, defining fight scene. Never happened. Instead we got people firing guns a lot and not hitting a whole Hell of a lot. I mean, when someone runs down a narrow corridor and you fire a sub-machinegun at them, there isn't a whole lot of places the bullets can go other than down the corridor and into the target. Yet somehow they miss? Even the A-Team would cringe at this foolishness. And then when it gets to any kind of one-on-one physical stuff, we get treated to a shabby Matrix rip-off, without the benefit of bullet-time. People getting kicked twenty feet through the air and sundry other ludicrous acrobatic nonsense.

C'mon Steven, you're better than this. Your career can't be over. Say it ain't so!

This is instantly forgettable (except I'm forcing myself to remember for the purposes of this review) and if you watch it, try to find it amusing in an A-Team kind of way. But I doubt it'll be high on anyone's "re-watchable" list. Out for Justice this ain't. More like Out to Lunch.