Cobra Reviews

Leather motorcycle boots. Extra tight fit blue jeans, black shirt, covered by a black coat, a pair of leather gloves. A 3 day growth five o’clock shadow of stubble. A mirrored pair of aviator sunglasses. Cobra is a hyper-masculine cop in steroids. Head-to-Toe, Cobra is the essence of male who sticks his pistol in his tight jeans waistband, whre u can see the snake on the pistol grip -like there’s a huge snake coming out of his pants. This Renegade cop gonna battle axe-wielding psychos, because there is a gang terrorizing L.A. whose members use axes and knives instead of guns and love to slash cops to ribbons. It’s the New Order murder-gang , headed by a hulking man called the Night Stalker (Brian Thompson) Brian Thompson in this movie is always glowering, sweating and sharpening a series of lethal, elaborate knives, brass knuckles handle with spikes embedded on it and a huge curved blade with a skull embossed on its side. Night Slasher is literally a slasher who walks around and slices open men throughout the night with a massive knife with spikes coming off of it.After killing people , they meet in abandoned warehouses to beat axes and shovels together while chanting about the New World order like in a crazed Satanic, fascist ritual.There’s a motorcycle mayhem at a motel: bullet-ridden chaos. A motorcyclist drives through the wall before Sly shoots him between his eyes thru the visor helmet. This leads to a massive action scene, where Cobra rides in the back of a pick-up truck, blasting attackers off their bikes. Cobra chase the gang thugs .Shoot them. Stab them. Stab them and then shoot them. Run them over. Set them on fire. Drop them off buildings...by shooting them. Blow them up. Blow them up some more. Pistol whip them, even impale them. There is tons of blood and violence!. We get tons of extremely bloody gunshot wounds, knife in the leg, self mutilation, violent crashes, a guy gets burnt up in flames, gory impaling, and nasty corpses. After decimating every member except for the Night Slasher, Cobra engage in a hand-to-hand fight inside the steel mill with the Alpha Villain Slasher! Night Stalker awaiting Cobra, his arms at his side and chest heaving ! In all its shiny, bloody, sweaty. testosterone over-load, bare chested Stallone goes mano a mano with 'Night Slasher', Brian Thompson!Thompson, in this role, looks almost like a Cro-Magnon man, his jaw is heavily pronounced and he seems to have a surplus of testosterone which contributes to his bestial appearance. That jaw says the word "PIG!" (with a bunch of slobber and cuds shooting out of his mouth, might I add.) and Thompson grunts, snorts, and has a virile bellowing voice. Compared to Thompson, the well-muscled Stallone appears rather smaller. Cobra and the Night Stalker's are soaked in testosterone overdrive, which leads to violence and insanity. The two titans of masculinity dux it out like the monsters they are, in a factory that manufactures lava, exchanging blow-for-blow in a brutal showdown in an old foundry surrounded metal pipes, chains, fire and pits of molten lava ,a perfect scenario. The two engage in macho fisticuffs, dripping in testosterone ,the movie shows Stallone at the height of his grunting, alpha male powers. The two of them go head-to-head in the fight of their lives. For a while, it looks as though the Night Slasher might overpower Cobra with his knife. But Cobra manages to get back up on his boots and starts punching the hell out of the Night Slasher and finishing him off in the most brutal macho alpha stallion style...In the film’s climax, the, Night Slasher calls Cobra a pig at least four dozen times before finally demanding “take me in. Pig.” Let's bleed pig! I want your eyes pig! I want them! You want to go to hell? Huh, pig? You want to go to hell with me? It doesn't matter, does it? We are the hunters. We kill the weak so the strong survive. You can't stop the New World. Your filthy society will never get rid of people like us. It's breeding them! WE ARE THE FUTURE!”The psychotic killer snarls:“Where are you, pig? I want your eyes, pig. I want them.” Night Slasher taunts Cobra with such a number of insults that drive Cobra insane and he explode in hyper violence and impales the guy on a dangling hook !He hoist the Night Slasher up into the air and impales him on a giant metal hook that just happens to be passing them by. Now all the Night Slasher can do is flail his arms about and grip his big knife with rage as he slowly dies. Bastard psycho will not only suffer a death by impalement, but he'll be burned alive as well! It’s the right climax for COBRA! They battle it out in a display of aggressive and violent manliness. Cobra sets a dude on fire after a psycho-on-psycho muscle combat with all that back and forth between Cobra and Night Slasher over who will penetrate whom with what! The conclusion is gruesome and sadistically violent. Stallone impales the villain on a massive hook and pushes him, while Thompson wails and convulse in agony. Holy shit!!! Night Slasher being impaled in the back by a large hook and burned alive by the stubble Cobra!! Graphic close-ups of the Night Slasher's wound after he is impaled on the hook and Cobra repeatedly forcing the hook deeper into him as he screams in pain, kicking his big army boots in the air! Impalement is the only way to destroy a hyper-alpha male stud - just like Van Damme did to Fender on Cyborg, Dolph to Trever Goddard in Men of War , or Arnie did to Bennet on Commando! The great final 20 minutes can be compared to the explosive finals of those movies in a celebration of brash masculinity and thumping aggression. Out come the chains, with those two leather-clad studs calling each other “pig” during chain play. Thompson who, finally stuck on Sly’s steel, wails and claws pointlessly at the point of penetration in his back as he is dragged to immolation in orgasmic climax!

I already saw this movie but since it was a while back, I thought I might as well check it out again. Well, eventually, the damned thing  wasn’t as bad as I remembered but it was still seriously weak though. Basically, I have to admit that Cobra himself, some kind of 80’s version of Dirty Harry on steroids, was actually pretty badass but, unfortunately, nothing else in this movie did work though. In fact, Stallone did write the screenplay and, basically, even directed the damned thing himself (Cosmatos was credited as the director but he didn’t have much input after all) so I guess we should blame Stallone for the end-result. On the other hand, they apparently did cut off many scenes to make the damned thing shorter but I doubt that a longer version would have been such an improvement. Anyway, as a result, the plot was fairly idiotic. It was above all quite ridiculous how the main character was blamed by his colleagues when, each time, he did get some of the bad guys which should be proof enough that something major was going on. There was also not a single moment during which they took a breath to explain what was the deal with this army of psychopaths. I probably shouldn't take it too seriously but it's just that the whole thing was so damned boring, it was just hard to care about the damned thing. Back in those days, they still believed that Brigitte Nielsen could become a major movie-star and she was still married with Stallone at that time but they didn’t have much chemistry, I’m afraid. Anyway, to conclude, even though the main character was quite charismatic and had some potential, I thought it was a rather lame movie and I don’t think it is really worth a look, except if you really like the genre.

"This is where the law stops...and I begin!"

It was never meant to be a brilliant Shakespearean drama, it was never meant to take itself too seriously and it was never made with the intention of making something groundbreaking...so take Cobra for what it is: Stallone in his prime with a gun in hand and a tonne of bad guys waiting for him to kill.

The 80's action genre is one that I am a massive fan of; the simplicity of the plots and no complex plot turns means that you can sit back and have a fun time without experiencing anything that will alter your life.

Stallone plays a veteran cop nicknamed Cobra who is part of the "zombie squad". Cobra is renowned for his quick and violent dispatches of those who deserve it. As the film opens we are made fully aware of this as he uses guns and cheesy one-liners. A serial killer rattles the city with a series of killings of random civilians. Cobra isn't allowed to be a part of the investigation, but doesn't take 'no' for an answer.

Of course, this serial killer plot is an excuse to fill the screen with non-stop violence, and let the body count rise in traditional Stallone style. The plot is thin and pretty much dissipates as the film becomes nothing more than an entertaining slaughter and mindless entertainment.

Of course Stallone's performance is far from perfect (in fact it's quite terrible in places) but he is in great shape and delivers the action we've come to expect from these kinds of movies. Like Arnie, Van Damme and Chuck Norris; Sly loves the formula of making wafer thin plots with lame one-liners and awesome action. He does not disappoint on this front.

It's very predictable as well, not to mention the startling number of conventional characters that appear. For example Stallone is the only intelligent cop, all the rest of the police on the force are complete dummies. The film is also highly clichéd and contains an array of quite embarrassing performances.

Director George P. Cosmatos teams up with Sly once again to create a very Rambo reminiscent production. If this film was marketed as a Rambo sequel and had battles of a larger scale then you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. It's films like these that got Stallone type-cast. Films as mindless and as entertaining as Cobra are just never released anymore these days.

Full of violence, action and gore; in short, if you love action movies then hire this one without hesitation. Lots of fun, but it's not a masterpiece.