![]() ![]() ![]() Instead we got people firing guns a lot and not hitting a whole Hell of a lot. But all through the movie I kept hoping for that one great, defining fight scene. He's even witty in a way that Jean-Claude Van Damme will never be. 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. The plot holes are stupendously, glaringly large - for example, prisoners who, when the jail is invaded, fight the invaders rather than attempting to escape. An action movie so ridiculous that it at least made me smile right the way through. ![]() 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. Throw in a bunch of people with really bad acting ability and who don't have real names. 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. ![]() Take an episode of the A-Team, remove the lovable and roguish characters such as Murdoch, Hannibal, Mr T and Face. We might even get to see him have a stick fight with somebody! Excellent! I was thinking.A Steven Seagal movie! Cool! We'll get to see him kick people and flip people and break bones. Oh dear! What can I say about Half Past Dead? I was really disappointed in it. Go figure.Reviewed by Rob_Taylor 4 / 10 Half Past Doughnut Apparently 90 minutes of gun violence is less dangerous to the public than two shots of George Clooney's butt, seen in Steven Soderbergh's thoughtful Solaris remake, rated R. And while we're on the topic of assault, someone should dopeslap the nimrods at the MPAA who gave this McMovie a PG-13 rating. The movie doesn't even work as a vehicle for Ja Rule, who's perfectly likable but gets lost in the hullabaloo of helicopter crashes, hostage negotiations, and assault weapons. (He's reaching for the toilet paper … and he wipes!) He's assembled a crack team of Hong Kong stuntmen (choreographer Xin Xin Xiong has doubled for Jet Li) and shot and edited their scenes so frantically that it's hard to see what's going on. The action set-pieces are obscured by pimpy super-fast montage editing, and Paul whips out the slow-motion and "bullet time" effects at the most mundane moments. Unfortunately, Paul's camerawork is strictly small-screen he shoots entire scenes without a master, switching between extreme closeups, soap-opera style. She's lithe and fast, and she really makes Seagal look like a dinosaur (his Wayne Newton bouffant and "slimming" costumes don't help). Her character is an action-babe cliché, with a spiky moptop and flowing Mark Gor trenchcoat, but she's fully invested in the part and her stunts look great. Only Peeples jolts the movie from its somnambulistic shuffle from point A to point B. Then there are the requisite interracial buddy hijinks (Ja Rule teaches Seagal to say "aaaaight" instead of "all right"), and the wall-to-wall soundtrack is thick with stultifying nü-metal guitar chords and readily marketable gangsta rap. He's also sorta spiritual and gets to keep his power beads in lockdown. Paul, a television actor making his feature filmmaking debut, covers all the bases: Seagal is Russian (though his accent vacillates wildly between urban street patois and his usual mumble) and seeking revenge for his wife's death, à la Martin Riggs. Enter the villain and his black-clad minions, who want something inside the prison walls. Naturally, the halls are bedecked with flat-screen monitors, boogie fog rises from the floor, inmates glower, and mysterious welding projects send photogenic showers of sparks cascading down upon the inept guards and the charismatic, all-powerful warden (Plana, a Spanglish-speaking slickster). After infiltrating a crime syndicate, an undercover operative (Seagal) delivers his gangster friend (Ja Rule) to the FBI and follows him to "New Alcatraz," the high-tech fortress of many a lunkheaded, dystopic actioner. There's a cartoonish villain (Chestnut), a hottie henchwoman (Peeples), a lantern-jawed hero (Seagal), a handful of innocents, ten thousand bullets, and a premise so wacky there should be a booklet containing the exposition and a list of character moves. "This is just like a video game," observes rapper-cum-actor Ja Rule, taking aim during one of the myriad firefights that comprise this lunkheaded, vaguely dystopic actioner. ![]()
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