Believe it or not this is a good movie. I don't hate this at all. Why? It has horrific dialog, plot holes large enough so you can plow a cruise ship thorough, and not much going on in the plot department. I like this movie for its setting(so exotic, so alive, and up to date) In fact, so up to date that this is one of the first movies that had modern cellphones in them. Believe it or not the hero in this movie takes the damn bus! THE BUS!!! Sharon Stone and Slyvester Stallone make a great couple especially in "sex in the hotel shower" scene. Talk about chemistry. James Woods makes adds some hostility and a pulse to this melodrama with his wisecracks, outbursts, and foul-mouthed banter as the villain. But what's with the late Rod Stieger and Eric Roberts fronting as Cuban mobsters? C'mon, here. The strange thing is, they make it work. The action sequences such as the Sly kicking ass and taking names while encountering a couple of thugs on a bus and throwing one out the window, a hotel room explodes and collapses into the ocean with the bad guys still in it, and the funky way Sly sets traps for the bad guys gives this movie redemption. However, the characters in question could've been a little bolder, a little more gunplay is needed, and I have a major beef with discrepancies in the May Munro story. She looks 35, now if her parents were killed when she was a little girl, shouldn't Tomas be a tad older(he looked the same age in her flashback) The Specialist would've been a great movie if the plot was better explained and more intense.