After being busted in a car theft ring, two gangster friends Nick (rapper Ja Rule) and Sasha (Steven Seagal) are jailed in New Alcatraz prison where mercenaries break in and storm the prison to hold a prisoner ransom who knows the location of a secret stash of over two hundred million dollars in gold. Now they must team up with other prisoners and beat the mercenaries before they kill everyone.
       Morris Chestnut is good as the villain "49er One" in the film downplaying his menace and manages to deliver the bad lines very well. Soap star Nia Peeples as "49er six" is hot. What I remember most about this movie is her unbelievable beauty and the sexy outfit she dressed in throughout the film.

This is like the action masterpiece "The Rock", except for the fact that "The Rock" was original, and this is just as awful as anything I've ever seen. You can usually understand if a movie may turn out to be good or bad within the first ten minutes of a film, and with this I guessed it would be bad within the first five. The concept for this film is hardly believable and in fact ridiculous. I got the sense this is supposed to be a futuristic film, but there's never truly a verification. The prison is re-opened due to overcrowding and it's supposedly advanced but shockingly stone age.
       What's even more implausible is the fact that they treat their prisoners like kings. At one point a prisoner is playing a video game in his cell to pass the time, and a death row potential sits in an isolation cell and is given royal treatment for no apparent reason. The prison is supposed to be state of the art and advanced but there's a shockingly low headcount when it comes to prisoners (I counted twenty-five). What's awful is that when Sasha reveals to Nick he's an undercover FBI agent, he explains: "I was busted with you and would do time to gain your trust." His sentence was five years. Wow, those FBI agents sure are dedicated to their work, eh?
       There's the obligatory action opener with Seagal who attempts to look heroic and the film quickly sedge ways through the wretched, laughable, and extremely cornball dialogue. I rolled my eyes so much while watching this, I had a migraine by the finisher. What makes this bad are the two headliners fake action star Steven Seagal who gained about fifty pounds since his first film, and rapper Ja Rule who is one of the worst actors I've ever seen. When he's not over-acting and chewing the scenery, he's under acting like a cardboard cut out to the point where audiences will laugh their butts off. The two are supposed to be friends for many years except they have zero chemistry and their delivery of their lines are cheesy, off-beat, and completely awkward.
       The most hilarious and awful scene is where rapper Ja Rule's character attempts to show Seagal the proper way in speaking slang. What writer Don Michael Paul attempts to achieve is a "Pulp Fiction" type of moment when in fact it comes off simply as trite and contrived. The characters are about as trite and one-dimensional as Seagal's acting. The writes never attempt to conjure an even slightly original or interesting character to remember, exposing almost every cliche in the book from the stringy short wisecracking African American prisoner known as Twitch (rapper Kurupt), to the tough and stereotypical hispanic warden known as El Fuego (Tony Plana) who scoffs and scowls with a smug expression and mutters Spanish words into his English sentence in every bit of dialogue spoken, and the bossy agent (Claudia Christian) who communicates with the mercenaries attempting to bargain with them. Congratulations to her for over-acting her part to the point where it becomes laughable. You truly are a bad actress!
       Writer and Director by Don Michael Paul whose directed such soap cheesy operas as "Silk Stalkings" and action series as "Renegade" and "Pacific Blue" is a master director (I'm being sarcastic, of course) simply for his many tricks in covering and hiding the revealing plus-size plump stature. He skillfully maneuvers the camera work to hide Seagal's noticeably plump figure through close-ups and head shots, and purposely closes up on Seagal's face to hide his double chin which he now sports, not to mention there's constant dark scenes that cover his fat and body doubles that pose as him in far shots. Seagal has a little magnetic acting abilities as a paper tissue and manages to show why he's such a joke in Hollywood.
       Don Michael Paul would be wise to return to acting because this screenplay is a joke; the plot is preposterous with many plotholes. Why does the senator and the warden say that the prison is impenetrable yet it's so easy for the mercs to break into the prison? Where are security devices and technology? Why is there no light in the prison? Why is there such a low number of security guards for such a big prison? Why is it that Lester won't reveal the location of the gold to anyone and would even go to the grave with his secret but reveals it to Sasha once he reveals he's an FBI agent? The dialogue is even worse with the cheesy one liners and horrible monologues, it's terrible they'd give it to horrible actors to use.

This might be a better film had it starred better actors, but nonetheless, this is an awful movie with no brains, no story, and a lot of violence. This film is low quality even for Seagal's standards.

• Here is an interesting note from Roger Ebert about the evil empire the MPAA and this movie: "Note: I imagine the flywheels at the MPAA congratulating each other on a good day's work as they rated "Half Past Dead" PG-13, after giving the anti-gun movie "Bowling for Columbine" an R."