The Specialist

The Specialist (1994)

Runtime: 110 minutes

Directed by: Luis Llosa

Starring: Sly Stallone, Sharon Stone, James Woods, Rod Steiger, Eric Roberts

From: Warner Brothers

Yep, this is a random movie I watched today, although below in my Letterboxd review I explain why I picked this one out. As the opening credits say this is “suggested by” a series of novels of the same name; I take it to mean that at best it's loosely based but the books are better.

I'll be honest here, I pretty much picked this movie out at random among the large collection of discs I have... although I certainly have heard about this from several people in a messageboard thread, who gave varying opinions of the film but all noted that actors Rod Steiger and especially James Woods hammed it up to an incredible degree here, and this was in fact correct; it certainly helps this movie even make it to the 2 ½ star range.

The tale is a standard one of revenge: Ray Quick (Sly Stallone) and Ned Trent (James Woods) used to work together in the CIA as bomb experts but they had a falling out as Trent did something bad, so both left. Years later May Munro (Sharon Stone) asks Quick to help her kill the people that murdered her parents when she was a child. Believe it or not, Rod Steiger and Eric Roberts are supposed to be father and son crime lords... not to mention both are supposed to be Hispanic; Steiger's attempt at an accent was something else.

It's a pretty ridiculous tale but it's greatly helped out by such things as a nice John Barry score and especially the performance of Woods, who is gleefully over the top as a crazed man looking for revenge himself. The chess game that he and Quick play was quite interesting. It's certainly better than the budding romance between Ray and May, which is just silly at best. There are “erotic” moments between them. Like I said it's some of the performances and unintentional humor that help lift this goofiness to even an average rating.

Oh, and I did laugh at how early to mid 90's this was, from the fashion (Sly wears a shirt that you swore he must have worn at a Planet Hollywood opening back in the day in say, Kuala Lumpur or Mumbai) to the music and also how you see the at the time modern Internet terminal, complete with 14.4k modem. Quick also adopts a feral housecat (which he names Timer!) and uses the city bus as his mode of transportation. Those laughs did help, for sure.