Half Past Dead (2002)

"have a down-and-dirty, rock-the-house good time with Half Past Dead...  Joe Leydon, San Francisco Examiner

Editor's Note An undercover FBI agent, Sascha Petrosevitch (Steven Seagal), takes bullets for his buddy, Nick Frazier (Ja Rule). Nick figures Sascha for dead until the two are reunited again on duty at New Alcatraz (a hellish, high-tech version of the now-defunct prison). At New Alcatraz, criminal mastermind Lester (Bruce Weitz) is set to be executed. Lester knows the whereabouts of a fortune in gold, but isn't talking. With only hours to live, Lester takes a meeting with Sascha, just as corrupt prison official Donny (Morris Chestnut) and his gang (including Nia Peebles) raid New Alcatraz by helicopter and take Lester and a Supreme Court justice hostage. Highly energetic action scenes pay respect to the films of John Woo, and director Don Michael Paul makes many tasteful choices in the film's editing and music.

	Morris Chestnut
	Nia Peeples
	Steven Seagal
	Ja Rule
	Michael Slovis - Cinematographer
	Don Michael Paul - Director
	Vanick Moradian - Editor
	Elie Samaha, et al. - Producer
	Don Michael Paul - Writer

Sight and Sound
"...Paul directs with confidence..." 07/01/2003 p.46

Chicago Sun-Times 2 of 10
Half Past Dead is like an alarm that goes off while nobody is in the room. It does its job and stops, and nobody cares. It goes through the motions of an action thriller, but there is a deadness at its center, a feeling that no one connected with it loved what they were doing. There are moments, to be sure, when Ja Rule and Morris Chestnut seem to hear the music, but they're dancing by themselves. - Roger Ebert