The Specialist
”Good, nice sense of irony, blowing up the bomb unit. You may ask yourself, why is it my turn to die. Ask God. He kills all the time. Why shouldn't I?” - Ned
release year: 1994
genre: action
viewing setting: home Bluray 10/27/18 and home DVD 6/18/14 and 2/27/09 and 7/7/99
synopsis: A bomb expert-for-hire takes on his toughest job yet: killing three drug lords to satisfy some woman's lust for revenge, while avoiding being killed himself by an angry ex-partner.
impressions: Pretty entertaining. It has a lot of cool bomb stuff...bombs of all kinds, mostly hidden inside normal objects. There was some good cool badass stuff, and I especially liked the part where Stallone dealt with some punks on the bus. The scene with James Woods in the police station was good too. The one huge problem with this movie is the Sharon Stone character...why exactly is Stallone's character attracted to her? There's nothing there...no common ground, nothing. Plus she basically whores herself out to two major bad guy characters as part of her revenge plot.
something this movie has that no other movie has: A bomb in a teacup.
acting: Stallone doesn't do much here, and Sharon Stone does even less (she's just eye candy with a vendetta.) Eric Roberts plays a larger-than-life evil spoiled rich bad kid. The real performance here comes from James Woods, who is so far over the top that you'll laugh at most of the scenes he appears in. He's one of the most evil ex-government operative characters ever to appear onscreen.
final word: Entertaining, if sometimes tedious.
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