In a sentenceJames Woods screams at a bomb squad for five minutes; we would happily have watched the other hundred and five
Miami, the present day. Ray Quick (Sylvester Stallone) used to blow things up for the government. Now he lives alone with a cat, builds bombs in a workshop, and takes commissions through an answering machine. The voice on the machine belongs to May Munro (Sharon Stone), who as a girl (Brittany Paige Bouck) watched her parents Stan and Alice (Chase Randolph, Jeana Bell) shot dead by Tomas Leon (Eric Roberts), son of the crime boss Joe Leon (Rod Steiger). She wants the whole family dead and she wants Quick to do it. He refuses; she keeps calling, and starts getting close to Tomas herself. Watching from inside the Leon operation is Ned Trent (James Woods), Quick’s former partner, who has his own reasons for wanting him found.
Luis Llosa’s Miami revenge thriller has James Woods, a John Barry score and some handsome explosions, and it spends most of its 110 minutes keeping its two stars at opposite ends of a telephone line. Watch it for Woods; skipping is allowed.
Luis Llosa’s The Specialist is a revenge thriller built around a man who would rather not be in it. Ray Quick (Sylvester Stallone) is a former government explosives expert who lives alone in Miami with a cat and a workshop, and takes calls on an answering machine from people who want someone dead. Alexandra Seros’s script, from John Shirley’s novel, gives him one rule: the bomb kills the target and nobody standing next to him. The film is 110 minutes long, carries an 18 certificate, and spends most of that time keeping its two stars apart.
The woman on the machine is May Munro (Sharon Stone), who saw her parents shot when she was a child and has spent the years since wanting the Leon family dead. Tomas Leon (Eric Roberts) pulled the trigger; his father Joe (Rod Steiger) runs the business. She wants Quick, he says no, she keeps calling. For the best part of an hour the romance is conducted by telephone, with Stallone murmuring into a receiver and Stone undressing in a room he is not in. Most critics have made the same complaint and it is the right one. A thriller about two people who need each other should put them in the same frame before the second act.
What the film has instead is James Woods. Ned Trent is Quick’s old partner, now on the Leon payroll, and Woods plays him as though he has read the whole script and decided to be the only thing in it worth watching. He talks fast, insults everyone within range, and in one scene stands in front of a police bomb squad and tells them, at length and in detail, how useless they are, while the officers stand there and take it. We laughed out loud, and we were grateful, because until then the film had been running at a murmur. Steiger goes the other way. He plays Joe Leon with an accent that seems to arrive from a different country in every scene, and we could not decide whether he knew. Roberts, as the son, is better than his part: sleek, bored, and one of the few people on screen who seems to be enjoying the weather.
The craft is better than the script deserves. Jeffrey L. Kimball shoots Miami at dusk, peach sky over turquoise water, and lights the Leon parties so that every surface gleams. Walter P. Martishius gives Quick a workshop with the neatness of a watchmaker’s bench, and the Leons a hotel’s worth of marble. Judianna Makovsky dresses Stone in black, white and not a great deal of either. Jack Hofstra cuts the bombings cleanly: the set-up, the device, the target, the bystanders walking away unharmed. The first of them, on a bridge, is the clearest piece of storytelling in the film. John Barry’s score is the oddest. He writes lush strings and a long, aching love theme, music for a weepie or a spy picture, and lays it over a film that cannot decide whether it wants to be either. We liked the music and kept wondering what film Barry thought he was scoring. Emilio Estefan turns up at a piano in a nightclub, which is the film’s one unforced nod to the city it is set in.
Stallone plays Quick as a quiet man, which is a decent idea for him. The trouble is that quiet and absent look the same from the stalls. He does pull-ups, strokes the cat, speaks in sentences of four words, and waits for the plot to come to him. When he and Stone finally share a room, in the shower scene everyone remembers, Llosa cuts it like a perfume advertisement, all steam and slow dissolves, and we felt nothing except a mild embarrassment on behalf of two people who have been better elsewhere.
The plot has more turns than it has reasons for them. The second half takes several we will not describe, and each one makes the film less about a woman avenging her parents and more about getting everyone to the same hotel in time for the big explosion. Llosa’s previous film, Sniper, was a smaller picture about another quiet professional, and it knew what it was. This one has more money and less idea.
Watch it for Woods, and for Barry, and keep something else to hand for the stretches between them. The 18 certificate covers the explosions and the shower, and only one of those is worth the wait.
Most critics find The Specialist a middling action thriller, and the praise clusters almost entirely around one performance. James Woods is named by four of the six as the thing worth watching, variously stealing the show or giving the only exuberant turn in the film. Several concede that the action and the explosions deliver, and Radio Times finds the supporting cast robust even while calling the film mediocre overall.
The spread is wide. The New York Times treats the Stallone and Stone pairing as a good fit, but Variety says the script keeps the two apart for most of the running time and the romantic thriller falls flat as a result. Empire finds the plot tangled but preposterous enough to enjoy; the Los Angeles Times calls the film incoherent and inept, with little to recommend beyond the explosions. Rod Steiger divides them too, Empire lamenting his performance while the Los Angeles Times enjoys him as an over-the-top villain.
The headline frames the pairing as a good fit, suggesting a positive verdict. The available page text does not reveal what the critic specifically praises beyond that framing.
Read the full review →The available page identifies this as a review but provides no accessible verdict. Its standfirst describes Stallone’s character as a bomb expert who targets people, without revealing any point of praise or criticism.
Read the full review →Parkinson sees the film as mediocre overall, though James Woods manages to stand out. He also praises the robust performances of the supporting cast.
Read the full review →Errigo finds the film preposterous but entertaining, despite its tangled plot. She singles out James Woods as stealing the show, while lamenting Rod Steiger’s performance.
Read the full review →The review finds the film entertaining in its action but ultimately disappointing as a romantic thriller. It praises James Woods’s exuberant performance while faulting the script for keeping Stallone and Stone apart for most of the film.
Read the full review →Rainer pans the film as incoherent and inept, with little to recommend beyond its explosions. He praises James Woods and Rod Steiger for their entertaining, over-the-top villain performances.
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ScarfaceThe Miami crime picture this one keeps gesturing at, with the volume turned all the way up.
Le SamouraïA quiet professional who really is quiet, and a film that trusts the silence.
Cop Land · not reviewed yetStallone slows down on purpose and gives the performance Quick only hints at.
Miami Blues · not reviewed yetThe same city, the same heat, and a far better sense of humour about both.
Blown Away · not reviewed yetThe other bomb-disposal thriller of its year, with Tommy Lee Jones doing the Woods job.
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