The notion of Sylvester Stallone and Sharon Stone together onscreen will be many folks' idea of movie heaven, and long after this thriller runs out of plot, the highly-toned twosome's horizontal workouts retain an absurd fascination.
Stallone plays Ray Quick, an explosives expert haunted by his covert assassin past but available for hire when the cause is right. Stone is May Munro, nursing a revenge obsession, hell bent on terminating the killers who murdered her parents while she, as a child, watched in horror from her hiding place.
There must be easier ways than May opts for, but she and Ray, rather than actually meeting, engage in an ongoing series of telephone discussions on various detonation and disposal proposals. Unbeknown to May, he's trailing her since she's such a mysterious sexpot. Unbeknown to Ray, she's up to more than meets the eye, this being a tangled web of deceit and betrayal and all that kind of thing. James Woods, meanwhile, is a suave psychopath in designer linen duds, stealing the show as Ray's ruthless ex-colleague turned hit man and advisor to Cuban crime boss Rod Steiger and his loathsome son Eric Roberts who, conveniently, happens to top May's hit list. In between explosions, Stallone and Stone flaunt valuable flesh shamelessly, separately and, finally, together, with a dazzling multiplicity of camera angles and sexual positions. The result is preposterous beyond belief, but, somehow, incredibly good fun. The only unhappy aspect for an otherwise titillated viewer is the tragic spectacle of Steiger, a once great actor, hamming away in a silly role and sillier accent.
This is, without question, the most expensive utter twaddle since Basic Instinct, and like that movie is embarrassingly entertaining.