The Expert

This film looked to be another great Speakman flick. However, like Deny says, too much talking, and not enough fighting. The only redeeming factor here is that the fighting scenes were very well done. Speakman is a great martial arts actor, but whoever directed this script did not understand the point of this kind of film. Street Knight and The Perfect Weapon were outstanding martial arts films and I highly recommend them to any action enthusiast.

Jeff Speakman never really made it beyond the lowest ranks of martial-artists-turned-actors (lower than Don "The Dragon" Wilson, for example), and with vehicles like "The Expert", you can see why. There are three major problems with this movie: 1) The plot - or should I say plots - are all over the place, there are some characters who get a lot of screen time but serve little purpose, 2) There are only 4 fight scenes in total, some of them completely unrelated to the main plot and some taking place in the dark, 3) The music score is overzealous and overbearing. Strange as it may seem, this is really the most annoying thing about this film: the score persistently tries to convince you that you're watching some sort of grand epic, instead of the low-budget limited-action film you are indeed watching. With all that said, at least there's James Brolin around to lend a touch of credibility. *1/2 out of 4.

SWAT cop Jeff Speakman comes home one night to find his sister dead and so when the suspect is caught and is given the death penalty, Speakman gets sad, however when he hears that the killer might get out of the death penalty he gets ticked off and so Speakman breaks into the jail to execute the guy himself. The serial killer played by Michael Shaner is so transparently mean spirited and just around obvious manipulative that it's fairly contrived to think that someone would buy into his story that he is mentally unstable. The Expert does feature some well staged action sequences but the reason why I didn't care for this flick was that it clearly didn't know what it wants to be. Is it exploring capital punishment (because there are people that get the chair even though they're sorry and there is an innocent man who is on death row.) ? Is it about how to cope with a murder that hits too close to home or is it a revenge thriller about what happens when justice doesn't prevail. However without a stance to take, The Expert pretty much talks itself in corners and every action sequence seems to be out of place, while the politics are so heavy handed that they seem too overwrought to really convince. In other words The Expert has too much on it's plate and for the action crowd this only provides the bare minimum action while for fans of movies that get political, will be disappointed by the lack of a stance taken. The movie itself has a few interesting elements but typically the messy plot got in the way of the revenge plot. Fans of Speakman should find something to like but after this flick he seemed to disappear into obscurity.

* * out of 4-(Fair)

This was Steven Segal-lookalike Jeff Speakman's third starring role, as a special kind of cop who decides to exact his own brand of vengeance on the man who brutalized and murdered his sister. The guy is convicted and locked away, but this isn't going to stop The Expert. Pretty lame action flick, with a couple of clumsily staged fights and a big showdown in the prison, where the bad guy is about to bust out when Speakman arrives to exact his revenge. Nothing much to recommend here, although I always liked Speakman, who apparently stopped making movies in 2006. However, I think I've seen him on TV occasionally, but I'm not 100 percent sure. Skip this one and check our hero out in The Perfect Weapon instead..

My main critique of this film is twofold: 1) 80's/90's action films like this tended to be reactionary in some way, but the message this one hammers home even silly for its genre, and 2) Jeff Speakman, while a good martial artist, is a charisma vacuum as an actor. First, however, what the film does have in its favor. As previously stated, Jeff Speakman is quite convincing as a martial artist and, in general, as a physical presence. I certainly wouldn't want to mess with him in real life (contrary to whatever Steven Seagal's beef with him was). The plot is also quite efficient, if rudimentary, in the way it sets up the characters and moves the action forward. The first scene in particular establishes Speakman's character as the no-bs "expert" that the title indicated he would be. The action scenes were also well-choreographed and there was some decent camera-work in the slower portions of the film. I also thought that James Brolin and Jim Varney (in a one-scene cameo) did respectable acting work. However, just about everyone else, Speakman included, was halfway decent at best. The writing also wasn't anything to be proud of either. My biggest issue with the film is the "message," if one can call it that. THE EXPERT delivers yet another right-wing fantasy about a lone "hero" who takes on an ineffectual justice system by doling out his own version of justice against the violent criminal who killed his sister. Of course violent criminals should be punished, but the negative way it portrays a female psychologist involved with the case very unsubtly clues the viewer onto what the film's stance is. Not that a film shouldn't take a stance on anything, but I happen to think the stance wasn't very fair. Aside from that, the score was overblown and there were a few pacing issues in the middle portion, where the main character barely gets any screen time. I know I shouldn't have expected too much, considering Jeff Speakman was a third-tier action star at best, but the obvious message-making made it a little bit of a chore to sit through.