As Steven Seagal flicks go, Half Past Dead is not half bad.

It's loud, preposterous and mindless, but it rushes headlong like some runaway train mowing down action cliches along the way.

It's sometime in the near future and Alcatraz has been revitalized to house the most notorious and most dangerous criminals, and a state-of-the-art death chamber.

A master criminal named Lester (Bruce Weitz) is to die at midnight taking with him the location of his stashed loot.

A disgruntled prison bureaucrat (Morris Chestnut) has put together an elite team to break into Alcatraz, snatch Lester, helicopter out and force him to take them to the gold.

Totally unrelated to that crime, undercover FBI agent Sascha Petrosevitch (Seagal) has had himself sent to prison to infiltrate an international crime ring.

There was actually a time some 15 years ago that Seagal could have made this scenario acceptable if not believable. In films like Above the Law and Under Siege, he could appear to kick some serious butt.

Now he can barely walk and the film's greatest special effect is disguising this fact.

He lumbers down hallways then suddenly he shimmies up ropes, spins through the air, catapults through glass partitions all the while administering deadly blows with his arms, legs and head.

His stunt men are working over time -- as is the film's soundtrack.

It's like an old Sergio Leone spaghetti western gone ballistic.

Rappers Ja Rule and Kurupt provide most of the film's intentional comic relief, with Seagal assisting with the even funnier unintentional laughs. The man can murder dialogue like the best of the screen's non-actors but in a much more amusing way.

(This film is rated AA)

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