Cobra
Director: George P. Cosmatos
Year: 1986
Rating: 6.5
This is as pure an 80's dumb-ass action
adrenaline driven film that flirts with fascism as there was. It is Dirty
Harry x 5. It is great fun and so stupid that I just relished every moment
of its dumbness. Stallone already had four Rocky films and a couple Rambo
films made when he appeared in this and wrote the script as well. The critics
hated it of course and action junkies loved it. It is basically Rambo joins
the Cops and kills everyone. Or maybe Stallone still can't act a lick even
after all his films. An amoeba has more acting range. But seriously who cares.
When he burps out "You're a disease and I'm the cure", I bet everyone in
the audience cheered. Or when the bad guy threatens to blow up a supermarket
he growls " I don't care. I don't shop here", it's perfect. This should be
put in a 1980s museum - when they made action films that didn't cost 100
million dollars but were great fun. Just Stallone firing his machine gun
and swarms of guys falling off their motorcycles. It was a good day for stuntmen.
They call him Cobra and he is a part of
the Zombie Squad. The crazy cops who do the dangerous stuff. When a psycho
shoots up a grocery store and terrorizes the people inside, they call Cobra.
This is of course just another day in America. One more mass shooting that
will be ignored. He shows up in a car with "Awsome" on the license plate
and a matchstick in his mouth. He kills the guy and some snotnose liberal
journalist asks him if killing him was necessary. Damn right it was. Another
by the book cop mocks him for using excessive force. Don't worry Cobra slugs
him later on for being a wimp. It turns out this killer is part of a cult
of murderers that want everyone dead - and no they are not the anti-vaccine
morons - but as creepy a bunch of rotting maggots as you can find outside
of a sewer.
They go around slicing people up for fun
- to bring on the New World. But a witness sees one of them - the cretinous
Night Slasher played so effectively by Brian Thompson that mothers used his
picture to scare their children to sleep at night. They finally bring in
Cobra and his partner (Reni Santori) to track down the Night Slasher and
to protect the witness. Not a painful duty as she is played by Brigitte Nielsen
who was Red Sonja just the year previously but gets stuck playing the female
in distress here. Looks fabulous with her fashionable cap on. The Cult sends
all their members to kill her and Cobra keeps telling her she is safe as
they nearly succeed time after time. You would be safe if you got on a plane
and left the country perhaps. But don't worry, Cobra comes armed for the
third world war and kills them by the truckload. I am amazed that I never
saw this - I think I was more of a film snob 35 years ago but this was wonderful
and laughably bad at the same time.
