REVIEW (WEB EXCLUSIVE)

 1/2

Hard to kill in his salad days, Steven Seagal has become an easy target. In Half Past Dead, he takes a ride on the flatline for 22 minutes only to end up an inmate on New Alcatraz, trudging through the fog with the agility and expressiveness of a bear suit. As with Exit Wounds, his 2001 career resurrection costarring DMX, Seagal is essentially taking up space in someone else's renown. His fellow jailbirds (a few hip-hop and rap superstars among them) take time to teach him that "all right" is "ai'ight," but what Seagal really desires is simply one more theatrical release before his banishment to the boondocks of direct-to-cable.

"This is just like a video game," raves Ja Rule as Seagal’s bouncing sidekick. Indeed. Recklessly overdirected by Silk Stalkings veteran Don Michael Paul, Half Past Dead is by no means recommendable yet at the same time stupid and inoffensive enough to get through without pain. The absence of femininity in any of the women characters -- from Nia Peebles's mascara-mad dominatrix to Claudia Christian's honking FBI agent -- might seem more alarming if not for the end credits cameo of comedienne Mo'Nique as a pissed off prison wife. She earns some worthy laughs, but Seagal earns them even more. When the movie's smooth-talking thug (Morris Chestnut) chucks a female Supreme Court justice out of a helicopter, his strenuous attempt at a change in expression could very well clinch him this year’s Razzie.

-Joe McGovern