Cobra (1986)

I had almost forgotten what a great simple thriller this was. Simple plot, maverick cop Marion Cobretti (Stallone) is assigned to protect a beautiful female witness from a cult of Neo-Nazi style supremacist bikers who are terrorising Los Angeles with a spate of brutal murders - You get it all here; a scene reminiscent of Halloween 2, where the cult leader (a monster of a man known as The Night Slasher) goes on a Michael Myers style killing spree at the City's hospital, plenty of bloody shootouts and fights and a couple of superb Car & Bike chases that are second only to the Mad Max movies, in terms of violence and spectacle. Really, really good stunt work and special effects! Also, there's lots of firearms, including Cobretti's hi-tech, laser sighted Jatimatic sub-machine gun, well deployed throughout the many chases and firefights!The tension throughout the film is well sustained and it is superbly atmospheric, creepy at times, but always entertaining and gripping one way or another. Brigitte Nielsen is also terrific as the model witness who they are forced to protect and she is convincingly terrified a lot of the time. Brian Thompson plays the killer in no doubt one of his first roles, and he of course later went on to play the bounty hunter in The X Files. The direction is top notch, and it was a shrewd idea, possibly by Stallone to bring in George P Cosmatos who Stallone had previously worked with on Rambo 2. Stallone is as good as ever, and if your a fan, I'm sure you've seen this a dozen times anyway. Overall rating: 7 out of 10.

If nothing else "Cobra" is a fairly interesting thriller. Cobretti(Cobra/Stallone) is a renegade cop that they call in to do the "dirty" work, not unlike the Dirty Harry films of old. Stallone is a nice fit for this loner character.The opening of the film is, much like the entire first hour, a pretty good thriller with some horror elements. Cobretti and his partner have good chemistry, and Bridget Nielson surprisingly isn't all that bad here either.The film has a little style and the car is sweet. There are many moments with genuine scares, but the film loses steam down the stretch. It just seems as if patience and funding fell short. There are some really ridiculous scenario's and plot-turns late, and the whole "gang" theme is poorly developed and a bit over the top. It truly ends with a thud.This is a trip down nostalgia lane. It's a violent film - defo not for the kiddies.52/100

"Cobra" is certainly one of the lesser '80s action flicks. It doesn't have all that much action, and isn't thrilling enough to be called a thriller. It's tiresome and uneventful.Despite having two actors from the greatest action movie ever made, "Dirty Harry" - the Hispanic partner playing another Hispanic partner, though he does absolutely nothing but inevitably get hurt, and the legendary Andrew Robinson, who played the best villain in motion picture history in that film, but plays the typical namby pamby bleeding heart liberal cop who doesn't like the hero's ridiculous excesses in this one - "Cobra" is more a spiritual successor to "Death Wish". It depicts crime as a faceless curse made of people of every persuasion, black, white, Hispanic, male, female; even one is a policewoman. As "Cobra" himself says, "you're the disease, and I'm the cure."There is no point trying to reason with or understand the individual criminal, because they don't exist. There are no sociological causes for crime - the traditional left wing scapegoats are gone: you can't blame race because they're every colour, you can't blame gender because there are female ones too, you can't blame poverty because some are professionals. They're also all barking mad. A potential point of interest for the movie might have been showing more of the criminals' reason for being, this "New World" that they beguilingly hint at, and why they are often pictured in groups, banging two axes together.But no. We don't see anywhere near enough of them. It's annoying the way they are so obviously kept in the dark to service the movie's right wing agenda. The bad guys are the only thing this movie has going for it - Brian Thompson makes a great bad guy - but we barely get to see him or them. Crime has no cause: it's a "disease", remember?Aside from that the action scenes are negligible. There's a boring car chase and some shoot outs that have obviously had the violence toned down: we see guys fall as if shot but without any gunshot wounds to speak of.There is also no sex or nudity; it's so sanitized it's like a Chuck Norris movie without martial arts.Stallone also looks as small in this one as I can remember seeing him. I wonder if he laid off the roids around this time.

Oh wow, this was kinda awesome. One of those eighties action movies that just gets better with age as the cheese matures. Its loaded with extreme violence, corny one liners, bad pop music, outrageous car chases, a hot damsel in distress and an over the top bad guy that renegade cop Sylvester Stallone must take down because well...Crime is the disease and Cobra is the cure! Its your stereotypical 80's action flick and yes, seriously dated now but what a fun ride. Stallone wrote the screenplay that follows Lt Marion "Cobra" Cobretti, an intense, take-no-prisoners Los Angeles cop who wears tight jeans, dark sunglasses and is never without a toothpick between his lips.He's a cop who doesn't play by the rules and is brought in to take on a bizarre serial-killer known as the Night Slasher. As the murder rate rises Cobra finds himself taking the only surviving witness into protective custody, model (Brigitte Nielsen). They hit if off, get it on and go on the run when an inside tip has the New Order killers hunting them down.This movie is worth a watch just for the unintentional laughs and absurdity of it all. Stallone is too freaking cool. His character's initial entrance in his pimped out ride with the licence plate that reads "awesome 50" and eating pizza with scissors because.. I'm not sure why but its freaking amazing. 3/23/16