djfrost-46786 This movie is missing something that the other Sly movies have. Action is good. Best part is Sly and what he looks like. The movie seemed more about how Sly looked than anything else.

Fluke_Skywalker When a cult begins committing a rash of murders, the LAPD are forced to turn to one of their detectives who goes to the very edge of the law and beyond.Clocking in at just under 90 minutes, Cobra is a movie with even less fat than its famously muscled star. Essentially a Dirty Harry for the 80s, it features the standard "The law isn't always justice" cop who shows his milquetoast superiors how it's done. Stallone awkwardly tries to graft a sarcastic edge to his match chewing, sunglasses wearing monosyllabic avatar, but the quips fall flatter than a 14th century globe. Paired with wife Brigitte Nielsen--who's not exactly Meryl Streep, but better than you'd think--he scowls and shoots his way to the final showdown with the main villain, played with an unnerving intensity by Brian Thompson (you may not know the name, but you know the face). Honestly he's the best thing about the movie, and I only wish there'd been more of him.

jadavix "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.

The Grand Master Despite Cobra developing into a cult movie, many agree that this is not a memorable movie for Sylvester Stallone. The plot is somewhat nonsensical, it is riddled with 80's cheese and glam, and the villains are over the top. Many could pick the movie apart but that would just make them dislike Cobra a lot more. While Cobra was a box office hit in 1986, many critics disliked the movie dismissing it as unoriginal, derivative and unpleasantly violent.Cobra starts off with a bang when a gunman (Marco Rodriguez) goes on a shooting spree in a supermarket and takes hostages. Lieutenant Marion Cobretti aka Cobra (Sylvester Stallone) sneaks into the store, locates, and is able to negotiate with the gunman. Armed with a sawn-off shotgun and homemade bomb, the gunman starts to rant about the rise of the New Order in society where they crush the weak and strongest and smartest rule the world. Though Cobretti neutralises the situation, he is berated by Detective Monte (Andrew Robinson) for his blatant disregard for police procedures with Cobretti's renegade methods for using violence as a means to an end to take down violent criminals. The supermarket incident is one of many random and brutal thrill killings that are reoccurring throughout Los Angeles. The killing sprees are led by 'The Night Slasher' (Brian Thompson) who is also behind the rise of the New Order. The LAPD is at a loss to explain why these killings are occurring and many citizens are living in fear. Cobretti and his partner Sergeant Gonzales (Reni Santoni) finally have a lead when they are assigned to protect model Ingrid Knudsen (Brigitte Nielsen) when she becomes a witness to the Night Slasher's crimes. Cobretti and Gonzales successfully repel further attempts on Ingrid's life by the Night Slasher and his supremacist followers. Though Cobretti's prophecies about the rise of a supremacist army fall on deaf ears, Captain Sears (Art La Fleur) authorises Cobretti and Gonzales to relocate Ingrid into a safehouse outside of Los Angeles.Sylvester Stallone, who also wrote the movie, does what he does best by kicking butt and take names as Marion Cobretti. While I love him in the Rocky and Rambo series, as well as Cop Land (1997) Cobra was not one of his most memorable movies. Cobra might be good to revisit every now and then but it is certainly not on my top list. I forgot how hokey the movie was, and some parts I had a groan to myself at how corny some parts of the movie were.Brian Thompson, who has since forged a cult following as an actor, made a formidable villain who faces off against Sylvester Stallone.Reni Santoni and Andrew Robinson, who were in Dirty Harry (1971) as Harry's rookie partner and the main villain respectively, reunite here as Cobretti's partner and Cobretti's pencil pushing detective who his openly critical of Cobretti and his unorthodox methods (more or less a homage to Clint Eastwood's Harry Callahan).Brigitte Nielsen wasn't the most memorable as Ingrid, the model who finds her life turned upside down after being placed into protective custody after she witnesses a murder.The late George P. Cosmatos who directed Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) and Tombstone (1993) did his best with what he had but apparently it was Sylvester Stallone who was the main driving force behind Cobra.Apparently Cobra suffered through a lot of re-editing and Sylvester Stallone wielding a lot of power to have the movie edited into a manageable length and not as graphically violent. Who knew what the movie would be like if it wasn't slashed up (so to speak).Cobra has earned its reputation as a cult movie however over time it hasn't really aged that well. It is a good time filler to revisit very occasionally however, as awesome as Sylvester Stallone is, Cobra was not the most memorable movie.6/10.