Cobra.

Time to skip ahead eight years, in this time Stallone has been in nine more movies. Rambo exists, Rocky is now a huge franchise, Rhinestone happened...then came this, enjoy!

Cobra was written by Stallone himself and was originally meant to be Beverly Hills Cop...you know before it turned into a comedy and found itself a black man instead. It is also loosely based on the novel 'Fair Game' which would also be later adapted again without Stallone in 1995. It was a box office smash, so surprise surprise the critics hated it although much of the complaints seemed to be around Stallone's character more than anything else. But can it truly be as horrible as the critics say? Well let's find out...

Stallone is 'The Cobra', a character so hilariously overwritten as a badass. His licence plate is 'Awsom 50', he's got the tight jeans, the shades, the cowboy boots. He also uses insults like 'dirtbag' and has some hilariously awful one liners, he even has a gun with a Cobra decal on it - Goddamn he is an 80's badass check list. Although they have added this weird health concious dynamic to him...it mixes it up I guess? Cobra is also apparently superhuman, since he ends the movie with barely a cut and a bruise, despite being beaten up, shot at and getting in car accidents multiple times before the third act even starts. His forced and nonsensical love interest is played by Brigitte Nielsen who acts so incredibly poorly, she almost makes Stallone and the cardboard cut out Cobra feel like an Oscar worth performance. She also really likes tomato sauce...they bothered to concentrate on this for one scene...for some reason. Well either way, I've seen more chemistry between my TV and the remote control.

Cobra is like part of some fictitious part of the LAPD called the 'Zombie Squad' or something...and Gonzales follows him around everywhere, so I guess that is his partner? We never really see their headquarters and it is never really explained - it would appear Cobra somehow does all of his investigations alone in his house, logic is far removed from this world! Just know, Cobra is the best. There is also a crazed killer on the loose, the 'Night Slasher', silently murdering people in their beds. Or at least that is how it is introduced, then as the movie goes along, it turns out they are like some huge cult or something? I have no idea, both this and the Zombie Squad are like the two original bones in the entire body, and they are the least focused on. Nielsen's character, Ingrid, ends up by chance seeing the Night Slashers committing a murder and so they spend the movie trying to take her out, basically making it worse for themselves as they go, this is how her and Cobra meet as he and a small team are trying to keep her safe, then logic just ups and walks out, leaving a load of bullet casings in its wake. No complaints from me.

There are some odd storytelling choices here though, especially in our relationship, as the audience, with the central character and our avatar into the world, Cobra. We spend basically the whole film several steps ahead of him, which almost completely nullifies the point of him solving the case, we follow him step by step piecing it all together when we as an audience have already seen the finished piece, then, seemingly realising this, the entire cop aspect is just completely dropped, despite spending much of the first half an hour or so establishing a case to work out, it all just gets dropped for the sake of more shooting. I don't mind, but if you're going to waste my time setting it up, just to drop it, I'm gonna be pissed.

Surprisingly however, Cobra comes with a lot of social commentary. Cobra can roll in and blow someone away, if he so chooses, but the movie creates consequences even if they never really go anywhere either. There is a lot of discussion on the laws that bind the police and just in general the walk in, walk out prison system and this was made in 1986. I can admire the movie on that, even if it means the action has to keep coming to screeching halt so a bunch of men in suits can sit around and speak of the legality of everything. Then again, the movie is pretty short, I guess they needed some kind of padding... although they could have just put us in the same position as Cobra to make the mystery aspect an actual main part of the piece but whatever.

This film is like a giant advert. I know every film has product placement to some degree, but it's just so in your face in this film. The film opens with a scene of a gunman holding up a supermarket, and this scene was clearly there to put in as much product placement as physically possible - then again that seems to be true of nearly every location in the movie, whether it makes any sense or not. Mmm, nothing like a Coors Beer. Cobra even has a giant neon Pepsi logo stuck to his house! They did really well to get both Coca-Cola and Pepsi to sponsor their film although I'm guessing the companies weren't too happy that their adverts got shot to pieces.

It's more than just 80's by style, aesthetic and tone too. The action scenes, my God, you'd only find action like this in these kinds of movies. I love it. Everything is exploding, the camera comes in at all manner of crazy angles, it's over edited as fuck - and just insanely fun. We get some great classic car chases too, it's just so much more satisfying when you know those cars are really flying through the air, that Stallone is really leaning out the window - that it is all real, at least in a physical sense (obviously it isn't actually happening). Nowadays it is all done on computers and a lot of the magic is lost. What does change it up slightly is just how intense a lot of the action is, playing off a lot of horror tropes to add some real tense atmosphere, it's great - scary, thrilling stuff. It's like an exploitation movie and a slasher movie had a baby. And it all leads to a truly satisfying, explosive third act. What a fun movie.

The whole thing is pretty stylish though, it has some great cinematography and some clever editing. There is also an interesting stylistic choice the film makes, to stack things happening at the same time on top of one another. If two scenes are happening in two different places, but at the same time, instead of going from one scene to another, both scenes are chopped up into bits and slotted into one other, meaning a rapid jump between each. It's really interesting and keeps the thing moving along nice and swiftly.

So do I recommend it? In all honesty Cobra is surprisingly thoughtful and well put together, it's still immensely stupid and in places a little rushed but I think there is a lot more to enjoy here than a nostalgic, 'well they don't make them like this any more' so it comes highly recommended from me.

Think About It!

-Locke