"Half Past Dead" is just another crap flick in paunchy Seagal's downward spiral into oblivion. However, unlike his abysmal dramatic follow-up, "The Foreigner", this action flick at least connects with the part of the male brain which turns down the IQ and turns up the testosterone making all the hokey stunts, pyro, combat, etc. seem somehow worth while in a vague sort of mindless way. At least this flick had a hottie in it and showed her navel..about the only thing in the film I hadn't seen before. For action and Seagal diehards only. (C-)

Note - I particularly enjoyed the scene where deep cover FBI op Seagal is asked by a fellow prison inmate if there isn't something more to him than just another inmate whereupon he willingly blows his own cover and admits he's an agent. Exit undercover agent. Enter birdbrain.

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.

Loud and multiple bangs for your bucks. Quite tolerable. After flatlining for twenty minutes an FBI agent(Steven Seagal)feels bullet proof and infiltrates a crime syndicate and lands in the New Alcatraz. His mission is to rescue a death row inmate and ends up thwarting a plot to recover stolen gold bricks. The typical Seagal martial arts is coupled with some moderately impressive F/X to hold your attention. The cast is talented as diverse and includes: Nia Peeples, Ja Rule, Morris Chestnut, Claudia Christian and Stephen Cannell. I find Peeples to be one sexy villian...she always seems to impress me! Not the best or worse Seagal flick and it helps to have very few dull moments. A big thumbs up for an FBI guy that rides the flatline.