COBRA
(directed by George P. Cosmatos, 1986)
Sylvester Stallone and Brigitte Nielsen star in
Cobra, a Pepsi commercial (sometimes a Coors commercial, but mostly a Pepsi commercial) where random women are hunted by gangs of psychotic men (and one big, bushy haired evil cop woman) that kill with fierce looking knives, axes, spiky knife things they hold onto and all sorts of other sharp, big handled weapons that they love to raise up in the air collectively, in triumph, in their warehouse/headquarters with fires burning -- I dunno, I guess it's their morning team meeting ritual or something. It looked very barbarian, very
Mad Max in California. Stallone is a tough guy with a cool car (AWSOM 50 is the license plate) who works for the secret Zombie Squad on the police force -- basically, he's the guy who comes in to do the hard, dirty work that the cops can't do. He seems to be the only person on the Zombie Squad, except for his friend, Gonzales, who is basically there to cheer him up and eat junk food.
The movie has a great opening sequence in which a bad guy with a gun goes into a supermarket and starts shooting randomly. Soon, the cops are there and the bad guy is still inside, keeping hostages. Stallone - AKA Marion Cobretti, AKA 'Cobra', arrives and after we see a giant Pepsi display (and Coors display) Cobra handles the bad guy. But, alas, danger is never gone for good -- this was merely a very light appetizer for what's to come, for a gang of psychotic killers are killing women all through the city and unfortunately for Bridgitte Nielsen's character, Ingrid, she soon encounters them, but gets away. This happens after a 5 minute bizarre music video sequence in which Ingrid has a fashion shoot with robots -- a montage of Brigitte posing with robots, Cobra and Gonzales wandering around the city asking people for information related to the crimes, and the bad guys showing off their weapons to us in close up as they prepare for their attack on Ingrid.
Cobra is all style and miniscule substance. There's absolutely no plot except for bad guys killing women around town and then eventually chasing after Ingrid just because she happened to glance at one of the killers from her car one night (they come back for her after her robot photo shoot, the evil cop lady who works for the bad guys does a search on her license plate in the police station.) Cobra and Ingrid, as well as the evil cop lady and another cop, take Ingrid to a motel in a small mountain town so she can be safe, but of course the evil cop lady calls her psycho friends from a pay phone and sends them all on a motorcycle ride to the hotel.
There's some fun car chases and action scenes. The violence is heavy and dark -- it feels like a horror film especially since it's nothing but women getting stalked by men with knives.
Cobra is based on a book by a woman named Paula Gosling. I never read it but I wonder if the book is nothing but an anxiety filled piece by a woman with a severe phobia of men and how violent they can be. There's certainly not much else in the movie. Sylvester Stallone wrote the screenplay but this is no
Rocky at all. Oh, apparently the movie
Fair Game (1995) with William Baldwin and Cindy Crawford is based on the same book
Cobra is based on. Also, according to IMDB.com, 52 people die in
Cobra. Interesting.
Anyway, I like
Cobra, but it's a bad movie and it can be boring at times. Sylvester Stallone is incredibly lean and hot in this -- his ass looks fantastic in a pair of jeans. He struts around with sunglasses on and while you know it's Sylvester Stallone, there's actually something about him that's not Sylvester Stallone for once -- I fully believe he's this Cobra guy. This is pretty strong acting for Sylvester Stallone and maybe it's because of the very stylistic nature of the movie and the fact that not much goes on. It's all about the color red; aggressive, hard, masculine energies; pounding notes on the soundtrack (with occasional beboppy 80's tunes by some unknown woman); and a killer with a very deep voice with no real motive but he likes to call Cobra a "pig" a lot. Did I mention there's a very butch, unattractive, big, bushy haired lesbian-like evil cop lady that's his girlfriend? Yes? Did I mention the weird robots in the fashion shoot, yet? Yes. Oh, and I even included a picture. Okay. Good. Review over.
P.S.
Cobra is now available on Blu-ray.
Closed Thread
\
.
