[BLU-RAY Review] HALF PAST DEAD
Steven Seagal in High Defnition? I am really not sure if my eyes are going to be able to handle this……..
OK, all joking aside, I am not a huge fan of Steven Seagal. I have seen a great many of his movies due to the fact that my mother is a huge fan of Steven Seagal, but personally speaking I could do without ever seeing another one of his “movies” after I had the misfortune to watch Exit Wounds in 2001 which not only starred Seagal but also DMX!
So, surprisingly enough, I had never had the “pleasure” of watching Half Past Dead until the Blu-Ray disc landed on my doormat. Imagine my excitement as I slid the disk into my PS3…..
Yeah, ok, so it was more like trepidation than excitement but surely it couldn’t be that bad. Could it?
So the “storyline” of Half Past Dead see’s Seagal playing Sasha Petrosevitch, a petty criminal who ends up being sent to the newly reopened Alcatraz, now done up as a high tech super prison.
In reality, of course, Sasha is actually an undercover agent trying to find the evidence he needs to prosecute the men responsible for his wife’s death.
Of course, before he can do this, a group of mercs attack the prison to try and get the location of some stolen gold from another prisoner who has been scheduled for execution forcing Sasha and the other incarcerated criminals, which includes rappers Ja Rule & Kurupt, to try and beat the mercs and save their own lives.
And that’s it! Pretty standard action movie fare really.You pretty much know what you’re going to get from this before it even starts. Some action scenes, interspersed with wise-cracks from the likes of Ja Rule.
And, of course, Seagal does his normal trick of talking really quietly, which he must think is menacing (it’s not - it’s just annoying!), and lumbering slowly across the screen. Early Seagal movies, like Marked For Death, or even Under Siege, feature at least one good thing. No, not his acting, but his Akido skills. The guy was pretty talented when it came to Akido and you were fairly guarenteed at least a couple of scenes of impressive hand to hand fighting. Unfortunately, you don’t even get that here. There is one fight between Seagal and one of the bad guys - which is not only over very quickly, but also features a really annoying spinning camera so you can’t make out what’s going on and just seems to be Seagal flapping his hands at his opponent like a girl.
And that’s it. All the other fights seem to be handled by Ja Rule as Seagal stands back and watches.
Saying that, Ja Rule is pretty good with the action scenes, but this is meant to be a Steven Seagal movie!
The rest of the cast are pretty forgetable. Nia Peeples, who has appeared in lots and lots of TV shows, is the high kicking 49er Six who gets to kick Ja Rule all over the set, and wears ridiculous blue eye make up while trying to look cool in every scene with a costume that’s clearly been influenced from the likes of The Matrix. Morris Chestnut, who has been in such fantastic movies like Under Siege 2 and Anacondas: The Hunt For The Blood Orchid (OK, he was in Boyz N’ The Hood too) plays the charasmatic 49er One, and is actually really good in the role. He is charming one second and deadly the next and is easily the best thing in the movie.
And how could I forget Claudia Christian? The ex-Babylon 5 star stamps her way through the movie as she takes her uptight role of Ivanova from Babylon 5 and amps it up to a scale that makes it feel like her character has a stick up her ass that you can actually see being used to move her around on screen. I’m not trying to say that she was wooden but…well, she made a door look animated.
But do you know the most annoying thing? This Blu-Ray release is one of the best looking I have seen! The image is clear and crisp, the colours fairly pop off of the screen and blacks are handled very well. It really is a great example of what can be offered on Blu-Ray. But that really isn’t a reason to recommend it!
Also the Dolby TrueHD audio track is also pretty impressive. Mainly doing it’s work on the copious amount of rap music that appears throughout the movie, the audio is an impressive aspect of the disc.
Special Features
Commentary with writer/director Don Michael Paul: This chat track mainly seems to be Don Michael Paul talking the movie up into something it really isn’t while praising all involved and defending the movie to the end. If you shelled out for the disc then you better listen to this so that you get your money’s worth but this is still pretty forgetable.
Deleted Scenes: A couple of deleted scenes that, really, wouldn’t have added anything else to the movie.
Making Of: A fairly pedestrian “Making Of” which see’s participants talking about how great the movie is and how wonderful it is to be working with the people involved.
BD Live: This feature wasn’t available until the disc was released on the 25th of August. As soon as I’ve had a chance to check it out I’ll let you know what’s available on this release.
Honestly, if you are a fan of Steven Seagal then chances are you already own this poor excuse of a movie on DVD. And if you do, then all you’re getting here is an (admittedly quite big) improvement to the image as all the extras have been ported over from the DVD release. If you don’t already own it…..well, I’m sure you can find something better to spend your money on, can’t you?
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3 Responses to “[BLU-RAY Review] HALF PAST DEAD”
I watched part of this on HBO a while back, and couldn’t sit through it. Not only is Seagal…well, he’s Seagal, but Ja Rule trying to act was laughable to me.
Yup, I have exactly the same opinion of Ja Rule too!
It ****ing pains me that we have a review of shite like this up on our site.
From the man who published last week’s review of SCORPION KING 2 lol
PS
You know something, I may be judging my arrivals a little too harshly seeing as I haven’t watched them yet, but what with me having just been sent STRANGE WILDERNESS and PATHOLOGY for review and HALF PAST DEAD and THE SCORPION KING 2 having reviews up, I think we need a “THE SHIT THEY SEND US FOR REVIEW” separate section, lol!
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