Taglines: Seagal rocks the rock!
Half Past Dead movie storyline. Sascha Petrosevitch is a car thief who’s brought in by criminal Nick Frazier to work for crime boss Sonny Eckvall, who apparently shot and killed Sascha’s wife. When FBI Special Agent Ellen “E. Z.” Williams and her team show up to nail Nick, things go bad, and Sascha gets shot. After eight months of recovery following his brief bout of being clinically dead from the shooting.
Sascha is incarcerated along with Nick in the newly reopened Alcatraz prison. Run by the charismatic warden, Juan Ruiz “El Fuego” Escarzaga, the place is known for its new state-of-the-art death chamber where the condemned can choose from five different ways to die — lethal injection, gas chamber, hanging, firing squad, or electric chair. Lester McKenna is the first prisoner scheduled to be executed.
An older man, Lester stole $200,000,000 worth of gold bricks in a heist that resulted in five deaths. Federal Bureau of Prisons head Frank Hubbard and Supreme Court Justice June McPherson have arrived to watch the execution, which is a result of June sentencing Lester. But she’s not the only one interested in Lester. A small but well-equipped team of terrorists — the “49ers” — have parachuted onto the island and gained control of it.
Led by 49er One AKA Donny Johnson, Hubbard’s assistant, the team finds Lester, and wants him to give up the location of his hidden stash of gold. When Lester won’t tell them, Donny shoots a nearby priest and threatens to kill others if the info isn’t delivered. His plan is disrupted when Sascha decides to step in and fight back.
It turns out that Sascha is an undercover FBI agent who’s been trying to use Nick to get to Sonny Eckvall. When Sascha rescues Lester, the 49ers strap June to the electric chair and threaten to kill her, while on the mainland, Ellen and her team plan an attack on the 49ers. With the help of Nick and other inmates such as Twitch and Little Joe, Sascha sets out to rescue June and bring Donny down, before Alcatraz becomes everyone’s final resting place.
Half Past Dead is a 2002 American action film written and directed by Don Michael Paul in his directorial debut, and produced by Steven Seagal, who also starred in the lead role, alongside Andrew Stevens and Elie Samaha. The film co-stars Morris Chestnut, Ja Rule, Tony Plana, Kurupt, and Nia Peeples. Distribution and copyrights are held by Columbia Pictures. Half Past Dead was released on November 15, 2002 by Screen Gems. The film grossed $19 million worldwide against its budget of $25 million.
Half Past Dead (2002)
Directed by: Don Michael Paul
Starring: Steven Seagal, Ja Rule, Morris Chestnut, Nia Peeples, Tony Plana, Kurupt, Michael Talliferro, Claudia Christian, Linda Thorson, Bruce Weitz, Michael McGrady
Screenplay by: Don Michael Paul
Production Design by: Albrecht Konrad
Cinematography by: Michael Slovis
Film Editing by: Vanick Moradian
Costume Design by: Barbara Jäger
Set Decoration by: Ernestine Hipper
Art Direction by: Andreas Olshausen
Music by: Tyler Bates
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for pervasive action violence, language and some sexual content.
Distributed by: Sony ScreenGems
Release Date: November 15, 2002
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