THE SPECIALIST
A film review by Raymond Johnston
Copyright 1994 Raymond Johnston
Director: Luis Llosa
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Sharon Stone, James Woods, Rod Steiger,
Eric Roberts
Warner Bros.
Once upon a time Warner Bros. churned out B gangster movies at an incredible rate. Some of these were punishment films. A popular star would get the notion he or she could refuse scripts or ask for more pay, and he or she would be forced to star in a B film. This told them who was boss, the studio. They would work with a group of standard Warner contract actors and studio hack technicians on some left over sets. Cut in some stock footage and in a few weeks the studio had a violent genre piece, based on some trash novel the studio bought at bargain prices.
It is fitting that Warner Bros should be behind this overwrought action misfire. It plays like a punishment picture. The dialogue is so corny and the plot so transparent, that you can hardly believe A-list stars are in it. Character development is like examples from a how-to-write-good book. Sly Stallone is sensitive, show him adopting a stray cat. Sly Stallone is un hombre mas macho. Show him throwing a radio-weilding punk out of a bus window. Show him flex for no real reason. Sharon Stone is a femme fatale bent on revenge. Give her blue tinted flashbacks, over and over again. Give her peek-a-boo costumes and let her walk into exclusive parties without an invitation. Give her double entendre dialogue about the heat from Sly's controlled explosions. Hype her nude scene all over TV and magazines for months. That and the explosions are really all the film is about.
The supporting B-film cast is on firmer ground doing what they do best, trying to breathe some sense of life into ridiculous dialogue and ponderous scenes. They try but lose an uphill battle. The big book on how to make bad films highly recommends casting people to play the most distant ethnic group from their real one. Rod Steiger is a master at this. He discovered long ago that when cast to play a Latin American, all one needs to do is say words like "djoo" and "leesen" for "you" and "listen." Add to that the crowning touch of always fidgeting with a gold crucifix, and there you have it, aging Latin American drug lord.. James Woods manages to be a creepy ex-CIA guy very well. That is his bread and butter role. He is given such ridiculous scenes, such as having a breakdown yelling at a tape recorder, that one ponders why he isn't simply committed by his friends for the safety of all. Eric Roberts plays a creepy character as well. He is remarkably good at it. So good that it is, well, creepy.
The title refers to Sly Stallone's character being an explosives expert. This is the biggest fumble of the film. He has a talent for "focused explosions." Somehow he can set off a big wad of plastic explosive in a busy night club and kill only the one person in a room that he targets. He hangs around to watch his success. (1) How does the bomb know not to send debris into innocent people? (2) If he's going to hang around, why not just shoot the one guy with a sniper rifle? How he manages to set up some of the more elaborate "controlled" explosions is never made clear. A major plot point involving an explosion victim is also never explained, leaving one of the biggest plot holes in recent film memory. It does provide James Woods with one stray truly funny scene.
The stars' clothed and unclothed bodies (Rod Steiger excepted) provide something pleasant to look at, and Miami provides some nice scenery. If you demand more than this from a film, then THE SPECIALIST is not for you. It is at times so overdetermined an example of macho film making that it might qualify as a guilty pleasure, but a very guilty one indeed.
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