The Specialist

Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Sharon Stone, James Woods, Eric Roberts, Rod Steiger
Directed by: Luis Llosa
Rating: R
Genre: Action, Drama
1994

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A woman (Sharon Stone) convinces a former explosions expert (Sylvester Stallone) to help her kill the mafia members whom murdered her parents.

Review:

Tim: I feel like The Specialist ought to be a lot better than it actually is. The film features a fairly decent cast, a number of explosions, some revenge elements, and a few unexpected twists and turns. And yet, despite individual pieces feeling strong, the movie itself continuously feels like it's less than the sum of its parts. This is a surprisingly forgettable action flick.

I felt like a lot of problems came with the pacing of the story. We have the requisite flashback scene at the beginning that explains the conflict between Sylvester Stallone and James Woods' characters. Honestly, this felt forced and pretty weak. It didn't feel natural or realistic in the least. We then get a shockingly long stretch of the movie where Stallone good-naturely quasi-stalks Sharon Stone's character. He's trying to decide if he can trust her, but it's a little weird. After what feels like an extremely long time, the movie finally gets around to getting to the meat of the story. There were probably a dozen better ways to set this all up. The movie chose a fairly ineffective path, unfortunately.

The film had a good cast, but they weren't able to live up to their talent. This is one of the more forgettable Stallone characters. He's a bomb expert and doesn't like killing innocent people. He has no qualms with killing guilty people with fiery explosions, however. Outside of that (and that he adopts a cat), I can't tell you much about him. He's too bland of a character. James Woods is way too over-the-top here. Watching his performance, I wonder how much of the sheer lunacy of his character was intentional, verses Woods just wanting to ham it up. He desperately needed a director to reign him in a bit. No restraint isn't a good look for Woods. Eric Roberts is fine, but I've never felt like he was a very good actor. He's excellent as coming across as a sleazy, unlikable character, but that's about it. I will say that Sharon Stone gave perhaps the best performance of the film. She kept me guessing and actually seemed interesting and complex. As a whole, though, the cast left something to be desired.

Now, I will say that the explosions were fairly decent, so there's something to be said for that. There was a few totally unexpected twists in the story that kept me interested. The movie did give us some unlikable characters, and it's always fun to see the bad guys get their comeuppance. Really, though, these are good, but not nearly enough to offset the weaknesses. I do want to mention that the bomb scene in the parking garage was so ludicrous- there was so much wrong with it and so many logic gaps, it was bad enough that I had to call it out.

So, as much as I wish I liked The Specialist, it's a generic, run-of-the-mill action drama. You can safely skip this one without missing too much at all.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 6



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend:
Assassins, Tango & Cash