(1994/Warner Bros.) DVD / VHS
Rave Reviews
“With all the preening, posing and stretching, it’s hard to know if The Specialist is an action movie or an exercise video. Or a porn movie without the sex.” —Hal Hinson, Washington Post
“Mr. Stallone and Ms. Stone… a meeting as disastrous as the Hindenburg crashing into the Titanic… the biggest bomb is the movie itself.” —Caryn James, New York Times
“Cheesecake meets beefcake.” —The New Yorker
Plot, What Plot? In the Bizarro World where movies like The Specialist take place, Sylvester Stallone is a “brilliant” but hangdog-eyed explosives expert and Sharon Stone is a “bitter but beautiful” woman determined to avenge the murder of her parents, which she witnessed as a child. After an opening sequence in which Sly is seen trying to defuse a bomb which threatens the life of a drug czar’s innocent daughter, Sylvester finds himself in “Miami Beach, present day” being courted via pay phone by silken-voiced Stone, who wants to give him the honor of offing her parents’ killers.
Constructed like a paint-by-numbers kit for creating the impression of a thriller, The Specialist is one of those “packaged” pairings of two stars that from its inception should have seemed foolish to its financial backers. Neither Stallone nor Stone had a hit film in quite a while when this movie came along—and its critical and box-office reception, as well as its five Razzie nominations, did nothing to further either star’s career.
For one thing, the screenplay requires its two narcissistic stars to waste more than half the film before meeting face-to-face, leaving the audience to assume that when they do finally meet, it will prove to be memorable. It is, but not in the way director Llosa or screenwriter Seros intended. The “climax” of all that buildup is a suds-and-sex shower scene that is one of the wonders of modern bad cinema. Both Sly and Mizz Sharon spend several minutes in carefully framed, revealing-but-not-too-revealing nude slo-mo shots, sudsing up and sizing up each other and themselves. When they finally come together, it has all the sexual heat… of a corporate merger.
Crashing and burning around our two stars is a convoluted plot that almost no one can follow, involving double crosses, switches-on-switches, and the old “red wire or green wire” cliché. About the only thing one can say in the stars’ favor is that they’re not the hammiest actors onscreen. James Woods, as Sly’s former Army partner and current nemesis, is clearly having a ball making fun of the film while also being its most interesting element. Eric Roberts plays the target of the hit, who has apparently found the Fountain of Youth, since he hasn’t aged a single day in the twenty years since he killed Stone’s parents. And, possessed by the tormented spirit of Ricky Ricardo, Rod Steiger plays an old Cuban don with an accent and gestures that make Al Pacino in Scarface seem subtle.
Greeted with hoots of laughter in its initial release, The Specialist is the kind of “action/adventure” movie only a studio focused on its bottom line could think audiences would take seriously, and only SCTV’s “Farm Film Report” could love. Yes, things do “blow up real good”—but the movie itself also blows up right along with them.
Dippy Dialogue
May (Sharon Stone), on pay phone to Stallone: “I heard that you control your explosions, that you … shape your charges …”
Razzie Credential
Specialist “won” Worst Actress for Stone, and the pairing of Stone and Stallone tied for Worst Screen Couple with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt in Interview with the Vampire.
Choice Chapter Stop
Chapter 22 (“May/Ray Close-Up”): In which Sylvester and Sharon, helping the environment by sharing a shower, prove their passionate love … for themselves.
Fun Footnote
Although he lost out on a Razzie to O. J. Simpson in The Naked Gun 33
, Steiger “won” the other bad movie award, a Golden Turkey as Worst Supporting Actor, for this performance.
(Ray Quick); Sharon Stone
(May/Adrian); James Woods (Ned Trent); Rod Steiger