Specialist, The MPAA Rating: R Entertainment: +1/2 Content: -3 1/2

Ray Quick (Sylvester Stallone) and Ned Trent (James Woods) were once CIA demolition team partners. When Trent started enjoying the killing too much, Quick turned him in, ruining his career. Ten years later, Quick is contacted by May Munro (Sharon Stone), who wants him to use his unique talents to exact revenge on the Leone mob family for her. The elder Leone, Joe (Rod Steiger), and his son, Tomas (Eric Roberts), killed May's parents in front of her when she was a child. Quick is reluctant at first, but he is infatuated with May, and takes the job. The psychotic Trent is employed by the Leones to stop him. Quick stays one step ahead of Trent, blowing up mob henchmen, including Tomas. Quick soon realizes that Trent is using May to get revenge on him. The tangled web of deceit is broken when May falls for Quick, and becomes his ally against Trent and the Leone mob. To put it bluntly, THE SPECIALIST is, yes, a bomb. From the opening scenes to the much-awaited ending, the viewer is subjected to a bad script featuring painful, often laughable dialogue, poor acting, a melodramatic musical score, amateurish direction, and second-rate special effects.

Big-name actors can't save this film that serves merely as a shabby framework supporting sex, nudity, violence and objectionable language. The advance publicity focuses on steamy love scenes to titillate prospective ticket buyers. Quick and May engage in very graphic sexual intercourse once, with male and female full rear nudity and breast nudity. As Quick does his daily workout, revealing his rippling muscles, May poses as if in a lingerie ad, often displaying breast nudity. The result is more comedic than erotic. There's gratuitous violence, as several people are blown up, and two are shot in the head at close range. Trent spews out most of the obscenities, possibly to make him appear even more villainous. THE SPECIALIST lacks the technical quality of BLOWN AWAY or TRUE LIES, but surpasses them in objectionable elements, making it a movie to definitely miss this fall.

Preview Reviewer: Pete Zimowski
Distributor: Warner Bros., 4000 Warner Blvd., Burbank, CA 91522