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.
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.
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.
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[release]24162[/release]