'The Specialist' isn't very special

The Specialist (1975)
Starring: Adam West, John Anderson, Ahna Capri, Marlene Schmidt, Howard Avedis, Harvey Jason, and Alvy Moore
Director: Hikmet Avedis
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

A small-town attorney/political strongman (Anderson) sets out to discredit and crush a young attorney (West) who has not only set up practice in "his town," but has also stolen away one of his clients. His plan involves framing him for jury tampering using an out-of-town "specialist" (Capri)... whose specialty is seducing men.

This is a film that is a failure in almost every way. It's got a weak script that keeps drifting between being comedy to being courtroom drama to being suspense to half-assed attempts at soft-core porn, and failing utterly to succeed even in the slightest way at any of those genres. It's also indifferently filmed and flatly directed, with techniques that seem to emphasize the cheapness of the production rather than gloss over it.

But neither of those are really what damns this film to a low Three Rating, although they certainly play a part. No, it's the performance, as well as the character portrayed, by Ahna Capri, a buxom actress who enjoyed a long and successful career as a supporting player on television shows from age 13 in 1956 through her retirement from the profession in 1979. Simply put, while Capri is unquestionably beautiful, she doesn't have the screen presence to make one believe that a happily married, extremely intelligent, and extremely canny lawyer would be so dazzled by her charms to risk marriage and career just because she batted her eyes at him. While Capri certainly is attractive enough to be a "specialist" in the arena where "every body has a price" (to quote the film's tagline), the situation in this film is so unbelievable--or maybe just poorly and thinly written--that even the most willing suspension of disbelief can't make it work.

And then there's the fact it has one of the worst endings I've ever been subjected to. While it's kinda-sorta set up earlier in the film, it still feels completely unsatisfying and so badly motivated that one wonders if it didn't come about by Adam West saying, "Look, my contract says I'm DONE with this shoot in 20 minutes... and believe me, I am going to be DONE and all of you are going to be in my review mirror in 25 minutes!"

I guess it says something about the film's watchability that I got to the end, but the only reasons for that was a hope that it was about to get better every time it shifted genres, the fact that Adam West is almost always entertaining, and a rather nice bit of acting from former Miss Germany Marlene Schmidt as West's fiercely devoted wife. Schmidt was like a shining light in the darkness whenever she appeared on screen, giving a far better performance than this film deserved.

Not terribly good, but still compelling

The Kidnapping of the President (1980)
Starring: William Shatner, Hal Holbrook, Miguel Fernandes, and Van Johnson
Director: George Mendeluk
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

The President of the United States (Holbrook) is kidnapped by a psychotic South American professional revolutionary (Fernandes) and held for ransom inside an booby-trapped armored truck full of explosives. It's up to a gun-shy Secret Service agent (Shatner), haunted by the memory of the Kennedy assassination, to figure out a way to save him.

"The Kidnapping of the President" is one of those movies that's saved by its cast. The plot is forced, the dialogue is universally awful, and the ending is all but spoiled by the director trying to ring some forced and very artificial suspense out of the final few moments.

Despite all the flaws, this is a film you watch because the actors in it as so likable and good. Hal Holbrook takes the character of President Adam Scott, who is written like an arrogant blow-hard, and gives him charm and likability. Shatner takes the Secret Service agent Jerry O'Conner, who is written like a borderline whiner, and infuses him with an air of resolve and toughness. Because of the performances by these two actors, the film's flaws seem to fade and you become interested in seeing how it will all turn out.

Van Johnson and Eva Gardner also do their best to bring life to a pointless subplot involving the corrupt Vice President and his shrewish wife. For what they had to work with, they do a decent job, but it really is an element the that added very little to the film. (They got this part of the political thriller aspect right in "Air Force One", another "the president is kidnapped by terrorists" movie... and perhaps one that learned from the mistakes of those that came before? Instead of delving into the background of the Vice President and his questionable morals and henpecked homelife, the filmmakers should have focused on the political mechanisms that kick in when the President is under threat.

If you like light-weight political thrillers, especially if you're a fan of William Shatner or Hal Holbrook, this is a movie worth checking out.