The Specialist

Continuing my plan to watch every Sly Stallone movie in order, I come to 1994's The Specialist.

Plot In A Paragraph: Sylvester Stallone is Ray Quick, a freelance bomb expert who lives off the grid. (Don't worry he is a good guy underneath, it is Stallone after all, he won't kill innocent people, takes in stray cats and gives up his seat to pregnant women on buses) May Munro (Sharon Stone) contacts him and wants him to kill the three men who killed her family years ago, who work for the Leon crime family, headed by Joe (Rod Steiger) and his son Tomas (a fun Eric Roberts) Their head of security Ned (A brilliant scene stealing turn by James Woods) Just happens to be Ray's former partner.

Ray Quick has to be the blandest and dullest character had played at this point. I'm not sure if he was bored in the role, but he sleep walks his way through the movie. Like with 'Cobra' we get shots of Sly looking mean and moody behind his shades, or intense and moody as he works on a bomb. Lots of posing as he listens to Stones voice over and over as he stalks her. Lots of posing not much actual acting.

Sharon Stone does, what Sharon Stone did at that point of her career, look good and take her clothes off. Eric Roberts (how did this man not have a bigger career?? I'd much rather watch him on screen than his sister) is a lot of fun, and actually under used. Steiger is surprisingly under whelming, which is a shame. But it's James Woods who this movie belongs too!! He is simply fantastic, and the movie is s lot poorer when he is not on screen.

So once again, for the second movie in a row, Stallone is completely overshadowed by his costar. Like Wesley Snipes in 'Demolition Man', James Woods not only steals every scene he is in, he walks away with the full movie!! You could argue three with John Lithgow in Cliffhanger

As with Nighthawks and Demolition Man, Stallone had scenes cut featuring the villain (This time Woods) and more shot with himself (the scene with the thugs on the bus, and the one where Roberts threatens Sly with a knife) at the last minute. It made no difference, Woods still stole the movie.

Despite a relatively short running time, it actually feels a lot longer than it is.

An interesting note on this is David Fincher was set to direct this at one stage. Stallone liked Fincher, and wanted him, but he was overruled by the producers, because of the failure of Alien 3. Instead they went with Luis Llosa, who had directed the straight to video 'Fire On The Amazon' with a Sandra Bullock and Sniper with Tom Berenger in 1993. Whilst Llosa's career went nowhere (he only directed 2 more movies after this) whilst Fincher made the mega hit Se7en a year later.

* 1/2 out of ****

Arguably Sylvester Stallone's last box office hit (unless you count Cop Land), The Specialist is not the typical Stallone testosterone fest. In fact, it remains a fairly atmospheric thriller revolving around obsession and revenge. But it's not as interesting as it may sound, thanks to the generally lackluster script and mostly unlikeable characters.

Stallone plays Ray Quick, an ex-bomb specialist who works for hire. After the movie's requisite prologue, he's in Miami working for May Munro (Sharon Stone), who wants him to kill three mobsters, especially the head mobster's son, Tomas (Eric Roberts), because they murdered her parents when she was a little girl. Quick contacts her only by phone, they are to never meet, but he's admittedly intrigued by her and vice versa. However, she's actually working for Ned Trent (James Woods), Quick's former colleague who's out for revenge.

Action fans expecting bombastic and over-the-top action sequences should steer clear, this movie will be too sluggish for them. The Specialist has no desire to function as a typical Stallone actioner. There are no large-scale gun battles, fisticuffs, or car chases. In fact, I gather Stallone received the role purely on the basis of his box office clout (and perhaps also his ability to brood and act generally depressed fairly well).

So what is The Specialist, then? Is it a thriller? Yeah, sort of, there are a few suspenseful moments, mostly pertaining to Stallone using his bombs to knock off the mobsters. Surprisingly enough, the twist of having the hero kill the bad guys with explosives (Speed and Blown away came out the same year) works well enough, mostly because the villains' impending doom bears a certain inevitability that plays to the movie's advantage.

But there's little else about the movie worth recommending. The story doesn't make much sense; as soon as it's revealed Roberts' murdered Stone's parents when she was a child, I scratched my head in confusion. He couldn't possibly be more than a year or two older than Stone, meaning he committed the murders when he was about, what, ten or eleven? More likely, it appears the filmmakers are trying to pass off Stone as a twenty-year old bombshell. Sure, Stone looks great (and I do mean great) in this film, but she can't even pass for thirty.

The romance is unsurprisingly perfunctory and generic. As soon as the hero and heroine meet, they almost immediately tear their clothes off and go at it. This is neither romantic nor sexy, even with the undeniably hot Sharon Stone as part of this tryst. I've always kind of liked Stallone, subpar an actor as he may be. He's always had a fairly commandable screen presence, though he has yet to translate that to genuine charisma (which is what puts him considerably behind that other big lug, Arnold Scwarzenegger).

Neither suspenseful nor exciting enough to recommend, The Specialist is of little interest to anyone except for Stallone and Stone fans (and maybe James Wood fans, who will either delight or wince at his maniacally over-the-top performance). I'm still waiting for Stallone to revive his career with a big-budget action blockbuster, but I don't see it happening. Hey, I'm one of the few guys out there who actually liked D-Tox, so I wouldn't necessarily say his career has gone down the drain.

Hey, I enjoy a good revenge movie as well as the next guy, even though I know forgiveness is the better way. Revenge films satisfy base urges in all of us. But, holy smokes, this crosses the line a little bit with the glorification of such....at least with the ending (which I won't give away but involves Sharon Stone's character).

Along the way is a fun ride as the revenge-obsessed Stone hires Sylvester Stallon (The Specialist, a term for his bomb-making talents) to kill all the people responsible for her parents' murder years earlier.

The villains are over-the-top, to say the least. One almost has to laugh out loud at one of them: James Woods. Few people in his era (70s and 80s mainly) were better at playing despicable villains than Woods, and in this film he plays that role to the hilt. He also rattles off the best line in the movie when he tells some tourist to "get a new shirt, too."

The other villains are played by Eric Roberts and Rod Steiger. Roberts is nasty and arrogant all the way and Steiger - as he has so often since the 1970s - appears cartoonish in his over-acting.

The film moves quickly which means it's very entertaining and some of the bombing scenes are quite memorable, such as a chunk of a condo building falling into the ocean.

Even though the villains are really nasty, there are no "good guys" here, either. Everyone is seriously flawed, as is the message of the film. I guess this is one of those "guilty pleasure" movies they talk about, because I still enjoy watching it every five or so years.

This seems like a film tailor-made so Sly & Sharon can 'strut their stuff' in the coupling dept. Sharon vamps, Sly warbles thru his lines. Yea, he's got a deep & sexy voice but you can only pick up on what he's saying to her on the phone if you got close-caption on your set! Anyway, they both look VERY fine in this film. James Woods is the pest you'll love to hate being the back-stabber that he is. "Slime" is the only word to use for Eric Roberts role & Rod Steiger's Hispanic accent is fun! See the edited version of this one. It's got a slick color to it that's quite appealing being that it was shot in Miami where everything's bright pink & green.

Let's face it, Sly Stallone can never be a romantic actor, no matter how hard the poor guy tries. He attempted to be suave and sophisticated in this movie, THE SPECIALIST, but alas, thanks to his rough and

tumble, RAMBO image, Sly fails. Maybe it's just his performance here, or perhaps by the others, especially Sharon Stone, Eric Roberts, and Rod Steiger (Oh God, he was a riot in this movie!). The actors mentioned probably gave their murkiest, most career-ruining roles of their lives, and for what?? The only reason why I found this movie interesting are the action sequences, and my favorite actor of all time, James Woods. Why he decided to be in a cheap flick like THE SPECIALIST is beyond me, but Woods manages to shine as the sleazeball thug who wants Sly's character's head on a platter. Apparently, Woods was the only enthusiastic thespian that walked in this movie's set; about everyone else looked bored. The same goes mostly for the viewer.