Half Past Dead

Half Past Dead is a 2002 American action film written and directed by Don Michael Paul in his directorial debut, and produced by Steven Seagal, who also starred in the lead role,[5] alongside Andrew Stevens and Elie Samaha. The film co-stars Morris Chestnut, Ja Rule, Tony Plana, Kurupt, and Nia Peeples. The film tells the story of a criminal who infiltrates a prison to interrogate a prisoner about the location of a fortune in gold while an undercover FBI agent has to stop him. Distribution and copyrights were held by Columbia Pictures. Half Past Dead was released on November 15, 2002, by Screen Gems. The film grossed $19 million worldwide against its budget of $25 million.

Half Past Dead
Theatrical release poster
Directed byDon Michael Paul
Written byDon Michael Paul
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyMichael Slovis
Edited byVanick Moradian
Music byTyler Bates
Production
company
Distributed byScreen Gems (through Sony Pictures Releasing[1])
Release date
  • November 15, 2002 (2002-11-15)
Running time
98 minutes
Countries
  • United States
  • Germany
LanguageEnglish
Budget$25 million[2]
Box office$19.2 million[3][4]

Plot

In San Francisco, FBI agent Sasha Petrosevitch (Steven Seagal) goes undercover as a Russian car thief and is brought in by criminal Nick Frazier (Ja Rule) to work for crime boss Sonny Eckvall (Richard Bremmer), who apparently shot and killed Sasha's wife. After some time, FBI Special Agent Ellen Williams (Claudia Christian) and her team show up to nail Nick, but things go wrong, and Sasha gets shot.

After eight months of recovery following his brief bout of being clinically dead from the shooting, Sasha is incarcerated along with Nick in the newly reopened Alcatraz prison. Run by the charismatic warden, Juan Ruiz "El Fuego" Escarzaga (Tony Plana), the place is known for its new state of the art death chamber where the condemned can choose from five different ways to die: lethal injection, gas chamber, hanging, firing squad, or electric chair.

Lester McKenna (Bruce Weitz) is the first death row prisoner brought to the new Alcatraz and also the first prisoner scheduled to be executed. An older man, he stole $200,000,000 worth of gold bricks in a heist that resulted in five deaths and hid the loot at an unknown location. Federal Bureau of Prisons head Frank Hubbard (Stephen J. Cannell) and Supreme Court Justice Jane McPherson (Linda Thorson) have arrived to witness the execution, which is a result of Jane sentencing Lester.

But she's not the only one interested in Lester. A small but well-equipped team of terrorists who call themselves the "49ers" have parachuted onto the Alcatraz island and gained control of it. Led by 49er One, a.k.a. Hubbard's assistant Donny Johnson (Morris Chestnut), and 49er Six (Nia Peeples), the team finds Lester, and they want him to give up the location of his hidden stash of gold. When Lester will not tell them, Donny shoots a nearby priest (Eva-Maria Schönecker) and threatens to kill others if the information is not delivered.

Donny's plan is disrupted, however, when Sascha decides to step in and fight back. At this point, Sasha's true identity is revealed and he used Nick to get to Sonny Eckvall, whom he seeks revenge on for the death of his wife. When Sasha rescues Lester, the 49ers strap Jane to the electric chair and threaten to kill her, all while Ellen and her team prepare a rescue plan from the mainland.

With the help of Nick and some of the other inmates such as Twitch (Kurupt) and Little Joe (Michael "Bear" Taliferro), Sasha sets out to rescue Jane and bring Donny down, before Alcatraz becomes everyone's final resting place. The conflict culminates in the 49ers taking McPherson and Lester on a helicopter and departing with Sascha in pursuit. Donny attempts to buy time by throwing MacPherson out of the helicopter, but Sascha dives after her and manages to save her, while Lester reveals that he was previously given an improvised bomb vest of grenades that he sets off, having already accepted his death. Sasha subsequently leads the investigators to the gold, Lester having told him its location before his death.

A month later, Nick, having previously learnt of Sasha's reasons for hunting Donny, is still recovering in prison, but is informed in a meeting with Sasha that he is being released early for his role in the hostage crisis.

Cast

Production

The film was at one stage known as Lockdown and was shot in Germany.[6][7]

Release

Home media

It was released on DVD in the US on March 4, 2003.[8]

Reception

Box office

Half Past Dead was released on November 15, 2002, in the United States, where it grossed $7.8 million on its opening weekend. It grossed $15.5 million in the US and another $3.7 million outside the US, for a total worldwide gross of $19.2 million.[3]

Critical response

Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that 3% of 87 surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating is 3/10. The site's consensus reads: "Seagal is now too bulky to make a convincing action hero, and Half Past Dead is too silly and incoherent to deliver any visceral kicks."[9] Metacritic rated it 23/100 based on 23 reviews.[10] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.[11]

Critic Roger Ebert wrote, "Half Past Dead is like an alarm that goes off with nobody in the room. It does its job, stops, and nobody cares."[12]

Seagal was nominated for Worst Actor at the 2002 Stinkers Bad Movie Awards and the 2003 Golden Raspberry Awards.[13][14]

Sequel

Half Past Dead 2 was released direct-to-video on May 15, 2007. The film does not feature actors Steven Seagal or Ja Rule. The starring characters were Twitch (Kurupt) and Burke (Bill Goldberg).

References
  1. "Half Past Dead (2002)". AFI Catalog of Feature Films. Retrieved 15 March 2021.
  2. 'Half Past Dead' production budget, The Numbers. Retrieved March 18, 2015.
  3. "Half Past Dead (2002)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved August 19, 2010.
  4. "The Box Office History of 'Half Past Dead' (2002)", The Numbers, published 2003. Retrieved April 22, 2017.
  5. Mitchell, Elvis (23 December 2021). "Half Past Dead (2002) FILM REVIEW; Prison (Bam!) Pyrotechnics". The New York Times.
  6. "Spielberg would consider directing Harry Potter sequel". National Post. Don Mills, Ont. 20 September 2001. p. A20. ProQuest 329990720.
  7. "Seagal Ready for Action on Franchise's 'Half Past Dead' and 'Foreigner'". hive4media.com. September 20, 2001. Archived from the original on November 1, 2001. Retrieved September 21, 2019 – via The Hollywood Reporter.
  8. "Half Past Dead". IGN. Retrieved December 21, 2015.
  9. "Half Past Dead (2002)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved December 21, 2015.
  10. "Half Past Dead". Metacritic. Retrieved December 21, 2015.
  11. "CinemaScore". cinemascore.com. Archived from the original on 2017-09-16. Retrieved 2020-08-17.
  12. "Half Past Dead". Chicago Sun-Times. November 15, 2002. Retrieved December 21, 2015.
  13. Campbell, Duncan (February 9, 2003). "Raspberry time for Hollywood's worst". The Guardian. Retrieved December 21, 2015.
  14. "Past Winners Database". The Envelope at LA Times. Archived from the original on 2007-08-15. Retrieved 24 September 2019.
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