The Specialist (1995) A movie review by Serdar Yegulalp Copyright 1997 by Serdar Yegulalp
CAPSULE: Not entertainment. A new form of slow torture.
Sometimes I wonder if I should be more faithless. I have a strange wellspring of faith in me that tells me that Sylvester Stallone, with the proper script and direction, would be great to watch. COPLAND went a long way towards proving that. THE SPECIALIST, on the other hand, may very well forever kill off what faith I did have.
Stallone plays a demolitions expert, formerly with "The Agency". In the first scenes, he's been assigned to blow up a bridge in South America, the better to kill a drug lord in a jeep. His associate (James Woods) and he squabble when they learn there's a kid on board. The bridge blows up, a fistfight ensues, and the scene ends so clumsily that it forgets to have Stallone actually try and follow through on his promise to kill Woods.
Never mind. The flick has bigger fish to fry. It drags in (probably kicking and screaming, although I bet they cut all that footage) Sharon Stone as a woman with no apparent job or means of support who wants to pay Stallone piles of money to blow slimy Eric Roberts into lots of itty bitty pieces. Why? Because when she was young, she saw Roberts murder her father. Thus are burning motivations born. Both actors look thoroughly Novocained. Given the lines the/y are condemned to read, I suspect such treatment would have been merciful.
Stallone and Stone spend most of the movie listening to recordings of each other's voices. This doesn't just slow the movie down to a crawl; it makes us shake our fists at the screen and scream, "Go meet somewhere and spare us!"
THE SPECIALIST as a whole is an uninteresting succession of fights, explosions, chases, sex-as-contact-sport, more explosions, and bombs with convenient red LED timer displays. Nothing remotely surprising, interesting, unique, or funny happens -- except for James Woods, who is always creepy and over-the-top in everything he does. But aside from him, the film plays like a catalog of everything that should be shot on sight in a movie.
One-half out of four ... ah, who cares ...
syegul@ix.netcom.com EFNet IRC: GinRei http://www.io.com/~syegul another worldly device... you can crush me as I speak/write on rocks what you feel/now feel this truth =smilin' in your face, all the time wanna take your place, the BACKSTABBERS=
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