Where to watch The Specialist
3 Stars
Ray Quick is a bomb expert who worked for the CIA along with a guy named Ned Trent, who’s extremely demented. When they have a falling out, Ray becomes a freelancer who lives off the grid. A woman named May Munro contacts and wants him to kill the three men who killed her family years ago, who work for the Leon crime family. Ray does it and after killing the first one, the Leons need to find the one who did it and it turns out Ned is now working for them and they task him with finding the bomber. The Leons get him to work with the police and he looks for the bomber. In the meantime Ray, while working on getting the others, can’t help but follow May wherever she goes.
I’m such a huge fan of Sylvester Stallone’s cinematic body of work that any review I write on one of his films has to be viewed through that lens. The Specialist was a commercial success at the box office but was savaged by critics in 1994. Razzie nominations for the cast, featuring OSCAR winners/nominees James Woods, Stallone, Sharon Stone, Eric Roberts, and Rod Steiger, were unjustified, particularly in a year that also had Blankman and Car 54, Where are You? as contenders. The studio’s marketing campaign hyped the on-screen pairing of Stallone and Stone in this erotic thriller, and out of the movies Stone appeared in during the era, The Specialist is fairly tame in the erotic department.
The film’s stars are in prime physical condition but only share a few scenes, including a steamy shower montage heavily advertised in the TV spots. Stallone spends most of the movie quietly observing the other characters from afar, while Sharon Stone shares nicely written scenes with Roberts and Woods. The Specialist is an efficient action thriller ripe with all of the era’s tropes, and those attributes also make it a fun watch.
Directed by: Luis Llosa
Written by: John Shirley, Alexandra Seros
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Sharon Stone, James Woods