The 1990s was a very strange decade for Sylvester Stallone, one that was characterized by the soaring highs and crushing lows.
He kicked things off with the dismal Rocky V and followed it up with the even worse duo of Oscar and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, before rebounding spectacularly immediately afterward with the one-two punch of Cliffhanger and Demolition Man.
Judge Dredd flopped hard, Assassins was panned by critics, Daylight was a minor success, and he delivered one of his best-ever performances in the acclaimed Cop Land, rounding things out before the millennium with smash hit animation Antz.
Caught right in the middle was The Specialist, which captured the inconsistency of Stallone’s decade in microcosm. The action thriller made $170 million at the box office on a $45 million budget, but ended up being torn apart by critics on its way to landing five Razzie nominations, all while Gloria Estefan’s tie-in single “Turn the Beat Around” was certified Gold in the United States after shifting over 500,000 copies.
The Specialist has a very strange place in the Stallone back catalogue for being an undeniably terrible film, but one that made a ton of money and provided a catchy theme song for good measure. On top of that, it appears to be finding a new lease of life on Netflix after finding a spot on the platform’s most-watched list, as per FlixPatrol.
