Ned Trent

Colonel Ned Trent is the main antagonist in the 1994 film The Specialist.

He is portrayed by James Woods.

Biography
Ned is a colonel and an explosives expert who works for the CIA alongside Captain Ray Quick. During a mission to blow up a car carrying a South American drug dealer, Ray notices that the car is also carrying a young girl and tells Ned to abort the mission. However, Ned ignores this and decides to detonate the bomb anyway, forcing Ray to try and stop it in time. He fails and the car is destroyed, leading a furious Ray to severely beat Ned before resigning from the CIA.

A few years later, Ray has become a freelance hit man in Miami while Ned has gained employment from a crime boss named Joe Leon. Following the incident in South America, Ned had been dismissed from the CIA and is now obsessed with getting revenge on Ray. Meanwhile, Ray decides to take on a job from a woman named May Munro, whose parents were once murdered by Joe's gangster son, Tomas, and who now wants him dead. May introduces herself to Tomas under the name Adrian Hastings and soon becomes his girlfriend, only so she can watch the hits on his men. Joe and Ned contact the chief of police to place Ned in their bomb squad, and Joe entrusts Ned with the task of protecting his son. Ned forces May into a partnership with him so she can coax Ray out of hiding, but she fakes her death in an explosion that kills Tomas. Both Ned and Ray believe May to be dead and a furious Joe scolds Ned for failing to protect Tomas, though he lets him live only so that he can find Ray and bring him in.

Following May's supposed funeral, Ned and his men hunt down Ray while May reveals to Ray that she is in fact alive. They make love in a hotel but she leaves first thing in the morning, claiming she cannot be trusted, only to bump straight into Ned. She makes up an excuse as to why she didn't let Ned know she was alive, then steals a phone to warn Ray about Ned. When Ned and his men reach Ray's hotel suite, Ray triggers a bomb which causes the entire suite to break off the building and plunge into the sea, killing many of Ned's men. Ray escapes with May to his booby-trapped hideout, rigged with pressure-sensitive mines hidden beneath the floorboards. Ned tracks them there and holds Ray at gunpoint, taunting him and preparing to kill him. However, as he walks forward, he accidentally steps on one of the mines which blasts him back onto the staircase. This causes a chain reaction of explosions and both Ray and May are forced to flee before the entire building is destroyed.