To be sure, I love Seagal but with the ups and downs of his releases it is hard to remain a loyal fan, much less run a devoted website. Just when I had more or less given up on Seagal's new movies, along comes a surprisingly decent effort like Half Past Dead. Rating: film 3 stars extras 2 starsįU&D! Original Review - Half Past Dead - 3/4 guns The DVD includes audio commentary by the director a 13 1/4-minute making-of feature and three deleted scenes, the most important of which is a flashback to the death of Petrosevitch's wife. Writer/director Don Michael Paul also includes a very funny deleted scene, during the closing credits, of Twitch's jailhouse conversation with his "large" girlfriend, played by Monique. Some of the film's stunts at the beginning and ending seem there only because they are stunts, but the stuff in the prison itself hangs together well. Tony Plena plays Latino warden "El Fuego" and rapper Kurupt plays prisoner Twitch. Unexpected guests are a group of parachuting commandos, led by actors Morris Chestnut and Nia Peeples but they only want to free McKenna to learn where the gold is hidden. McKenna has mellowed in prison and found religion, but he still will not reveal the whereabouts of his $200 million in gold "blood money." One guest at the execution is Jane McPherson (Linda Thorson), now a Supreme Court justice, but also the judge who originally sentenced McKenna. Because Petrosevitch was shot and his heart actually stopped beating during the raid, convicted killer Lester McKenna (Bruce Weitz) asks for Petrosevitch to be his companion in his last hour before execution. Frazier and Petrosevitch are both being processed as inmates. The film then cuts to eight months later at the newly reopened Alcatraz island prison (Alcatraz was closed in 1962) in San Francisco Bay. After stealing a car and driving crazily, a shootout erupts when FBI Special Agent Ellen Williams (Claudia Christian of TV's "Babylon 5") tries to arrest them. The film opens with Seagal's FBI agent Sascha Petrosevitch (we're not actually told until 47 minutes in that he is FBI, but it's pretty obvious from the trailer and box copy that he is) trying to get a job as a car thief for Sonny Ekvall, an East European crime syndicate head. Call it "Die Hard in Alcatraz," but at least the action is plentiful and the actors appealing, especially rapper Ja Rule as Seagal's sidekick Nicholas Frazier. Drawing on candid interviews with the stars themselves, plus their collaborators, friends and foes, The Last Action Heroes is a no-holds-barred account of a period in Hollywood history when there were no limits to the heights of fame these men achieved, or to the mayhem they wrought, on screen and off.Here's a decent review of Half Past Dead taken from * Half Past Dead (Columbia TriStar video and DVD, PG-13, 98 min.) I'm not a big fan of Steven Seagal, but this has to be the most entertaining film I've seen him in. It also looks at how, as the 1990s rolled on, the glory days of these macho men began to fade. ![]() ![]() Revealing fascinating untold stories of the colourful characters who ascended in their wake – high-kickers Chuck Norris and Jackie Chan, glowering tough guys Dolph Lundgren and Steven Seagal, and quipping troublemakers Jean-Claude Van Damme and Bruce Willis – it chronicles the rise of the invincible action hero who used muscle, martial arts or the perfect weapon to save the day. This wildly entertaining account of the golden age of the action movie charts Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s carnage-packed journey from enmity to friendship against the backdrop of Reagan’s America and the Cold War.
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