HALF PAST DEAD - Blu-ray review

Great title. Lousy movie.

"Half Past Dead" from 2002 was one of Steven Seagal's last theatrical releases before he turned to the direct-to-video market. To say that it is not among Seagal's better efforts is putting it mildly. It's a little sad that he left the big screen on such a low note, but his fans can still see him in his latest DVD adventures or savor his better roles in things like "Under Siege" and "Under Siege 2," both available (or soon to be) on Blu-ray as well as standard def.

Anyway, what we've got here is the Blu-ray edition of "Half Past Dead," complete with a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 soundtrack for maximum impact on every punch and kick. Why Sony chose this particular film as a subject for high-definition transfer rather than so many worthier candidates is anybody's guess, but mine is that there are a lot of Blu-ray fans out there who enjoy this kind of action movie, and maybe the dumber the action the better. If so, "Half Past Dead" will delight them no end.

So, what's it about? Steven Seagal is the good guy, and he beats up and/or kills about a hundred bad guys, and it ends.

What do you mean, Is that all? That's all that ever happens in a Steven Seagal movie. OK, you want a few details, I'll give you a few details. Seagal plays a fellow named Sasha Petrosevitch, an FBI agent who works undercover. The filmmakers don't want us to know this until about a third of the way into the picture, but because the keep case announces the fact loud and clear, I don't feel too badly mentioning it up front. Sasha's trying to nail a big-time hood who was responsible for killing his wife, so he's pretending to be an inmate at Alcatraz (yes, THAT Alcatraz, which has just reopened for business as New Alcatraz. It's surprising the film didn't reincarnate Al Capone as one of the prisoners.) Incidentally, the movie is called "Half Past Dead" because at one point, Seagal's Sasha goes into cardiac arrest and is clinically dead for twenty-one minutes. The movie appears clinically dead for ninety-eight minutes.

So Sasha is hanging out at the Rock, minding his own business, trying to get the goods on the hoods, when the prison decides to execute a guy named Lester (Bruce Weitz), who stole $200,000,000 in gold some twenty years earlier and hid it out somewhere. The FBI have given up trying to wheedle the location of the gold out of him, but a group of evil commandos led by a rogue agent (Morris Chestnut) is determined to get the information from him before he dies. The commandos land on the island via helicopter minutes before the execution, take over the place, and hold a Supreme Court Justice for ransom. Then their helicopter crashes. Sometimes, nothing goes right.

The commandos shoot a dozen guards, blast through a armored door, take over the communications station, and destroy a watchtower. And nobody on the island notices. Only in the movies.

With the evil commandos in charge of New Alcatraz, it's up to Seagal to save the day. The resultant movie is a combination of "The Rock," "Die Hard," and Seagal's previous "Under Siege" films, but without any of the fun of those movies.

Along for the ride are Tony Plana as the prison's tough warden, "El Fuego" (yes, "the fire"; I said the guy was tough); rapper Ja Rule as a fellow inmate, Nick Frazier; rapper Kurupt as another inmate, Twitch (lots of rap sessions at this prison); Nia Peeples as a sexy commando, 49er Six, with nifty martial-arts skills; Linda Thorson as Justice Jane McPherson; Claudia Christian as Special Agent Ellen Williams; and the usual assortment of brutes, weirdos, and hangers-on.

Mostly, stuff happens in the picture just to be happening. The movie opens with Sasha driving fast and furiously for no other reason than for the thrills it might give the audience. I suppose you could argue that it establishes Sasha's character as a reckless or dangerous guy, or that he's trying to impress a gangster buddy with his steady nerves and daring, but we know it's just there to kill time and pad out the plot. A moment later there's an FBI shoot-out that has little purpose, either, except to get things going on a loud note (and get Sasha safely behind bars).

The fact is, despite all the shooting, punching, kicking, and exploding that goes on in the movie, "Half Past Dead" manages to generate zero tension, zero excitement, zero suspense, and almost zero humor. Unless you count unintentional humor. There were several places in the movie where I laughed out loud, like where Seagal and the head baddie are swinging on chains like a pair of Tarzans fighting it out; or when the commandos' helicopter crashes through the prison ceiling; or after the hardened prisoners escape their cells and start playing a game of basketball. (I couldn't make this stuff up.)

Also, it looks like the filmmakers tried their best to get a PG-13 rating. You won't find a hard profanity or much more than a drop of blood in the whole affair. Not that I'm advocating R-rated movies because the newest "Live Free or Die Hard" movie was PG-13 rated and was still great. But, really, "Half Past Dead" plays like a made-for-TV flick, it's so safe.

To be fair, the filmmakers create a few nice shots, and the movie looks slickly made, all of it useless. The movie just doesn't go anywhere or do anything, and, as his wont, Seagal seems literally to sleepwalk through his part. Not even the fight choreography holds much interest; it's like a seventh-grade modern-dance class in gym.

Maybe "Half Past Dead" was comedy after all. It's too ludicrous for anybody to take it seriously, even as a DAM (Dumb Action Movie). And the climax is spectacularly funny in its total ineptness. So, yeah, maybe it's worth a look, if only for the laughs.

Video:
While I could never get into the plot or characters, I admired the picture quality quite a lot. The Sony engineers have transferred the 1.85:1-ratio movie to Blu-ray disc at 1080p using an MPEG-4/AVC video codec and a dual-layer BD50 with excellent results. The transfer renders facial details quite well, with realistic lines, pores, and structure, except in a few isolated instances where things soften up a bit. Colors, tints, and shadings are also natural in appearance, with normal and expected amounts of fine print grain providing texture and depth. I would like to have seen deeper black levels, though, and there is a small degree of murkiness in darker areas of the screen.

Audio:
The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 sound rocks, for better or for worse. The director fills the soundtrack with loud, raucous hip-hop and rap music that thunders at listeners almost endlessly. Then you've got a pounding bass, bullets and explosions blazing from all directions, and helicopters flying overhead every two minutes to add to the general sense of aural havoc. Let's just say the TrueHD does everything we want of it, the results of which may or may not have the neighbors or the spouse coming in to ask you to turn it down.

Extras:
There are four primary bonus items on the disc. The first is an audio commentary with writer-director Don Michael Paul. He's a soft-spoken guy whose voice belies the amount of mayhem he created in the picture. Frankly, I enjoyed the few minutes I spent with him more than I enjoyed watching the movie he made. The second item is a series of three deleted scenes at about a minute and a half each. The third item is a thirteen-minute featurette, "The Making of Half Past Dead," that is interchangeable with every other "making-of" featurette you've ever seen. And the fourth item is BD-Live, the ability to connect the disc to the Internet via a compatible player and download heaven only knows what.

The extras conclude with sixteen scene selections but, as usual these days, no chapter insert; bookmarks; pop-up menus; a widescreen theatrical trailer; previews of several other Sony Blu-ray products; English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese spoken languages; English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Thai, and Korean subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired.

Parting Shots:
"Half Past Dead" is twice as bad as it could have been and half as bad as you might have heard it was. There's a lot of noise and busyness involved for practically no entertainment value, unless you count the unintentional humor. It's Seagal at his most minimal, saying and doing less in this film than in practically any film he's been in. Maybe it's for the best.

Final note: I understand there's a 2007 sequel to this thing called "Half Past Dead 2," which does not have Seagal in it. As I say, maybe it's for the best.