Rating: * 1/2 out of ****
Cobra is an 80s flick all the way, made back in the days when macho action flicks featuring one-man armies reigned supreme, so it's technically a movie that should be right up my alley. But watching it again for the first time in over ten years, it serves more as a reminder that making a macho classic isn't quite as easy as it seems, and why Schwarzenegger's Commando will always be the standard by which the one-man army genre will be judged. Hell, forget Commando, I'd estimate Cobra is only about half as good as Dolph Lundgren's The Punisher, if that says anything about where this rates in the annals of 80s macho action cinema.
Sylvester Stallone stars as Lieutenant Marion Cobretti, a trigger-happy L.A. cop who shows little mercy to the scum of society. Naturally, he's the perfect man to protect a model (Brigitte Nielsen) who's the target of the Night Slasher (Brian Thompson), the head of a nasty cult that wants to create a new world order. They've got their sights set on Nielsen because she saw the Night Slasher exerting one of his more intense facial expressions on a particularly dark night, and that's apparently enough to deem her an eyewitness to a murder she clearly didn't see.
Anyway, it's obvious how the rest of the movie will play out; Cobretti will make out with the model, somehow keep her completely unharmed even when getting the both of them into lots of chases and shootouts, and he'll kill all the scum before riding off with the "babe" into the proverbial sunset. If you think I'm giving too much away, then you definitely haven't seen enough action movies.
While its an unwritten rule that one usually doesn't watch these kinds of action movies for plot, I think it's fair to say that one at least hopes for a fairly consistent flow in its narrative, or for the writer (in this case, Stallone himself) to offer up a compelling MacGuffin that bridges the action scenes well enough to hold interest between the shoot 'em up action. No such luck here; a fair portion of the plot is structured around the cult and their serial killings, but the film just glances over the cult's motives, and what is revealed sounds like it was (badly) ad-libbed by Brian Thompson on the spot.
Just as bad is the main story revolving around Cobretti protecting the model. Despite being a real-life couple at the time, Stallone and Nielsen have no chemistry, making their scenes together painfully awkward and unconvincing. Even Schwarzenegger and Rae Dawn Chong worked way better together in Commando and there wasn't even any attempted romantic tension in that relationship. If you actually rooted for Cobretti and the chick to get together by the end, you are a better person than me.
Even with all these faults, what ultimately kills the movie is that it's just not much fun. The action scenes are fairly plentiful, and a few of them are even reasonably decent (the big car chase is well-shot and edited, and a later chase scene where Cobretti mows down a lot of bikers from the back of a pick-up truck hints at the fun flick this could have been if it had boasted more self-knowingly outrageous moments like that), but without any care towards plot or character, it's hard to get involved in all the mayhem, especially when a lot of these scenes are mired in boring clichés (the final showdown is set in a foundry; argghh, I hate that setting!).
Even worse is the fact that almost everyone involved seemed painfully unaware they were making pulpy escapist cinema. Aside from a few very unsuccessful one-liners, Cobra is too serious in tone to genuinely enjoy. A lot of action movies that take themselves seriously manage to work because of (at least mild) attention to plot and characters; without these elements, the laziness of the filmmakers becomes more obvious as we watch a film that wishes to be taken seriously (there's a half-hearted attempt at a message about the hypocrisy and ineffectiveness of justice) without going into the effort to deserve that merit, and that's just plain insulting.
Cobra is an 80s flick all the way, made back in the days when macho action flicks featuring one-man armies reigned supreme, so it's technically a movie that should be right up my alley. But watching it again for the first time in over ten years, it serves more as a reminder that making a macho classic isn't quite as easy as it seems, and why Schwarzenegger's Commando will always be the standard by which the one-man army genre will be judged. Hell, forget Commando, I'd estimate Cobra is only about half as good as Dolph Lundgren's The Punisher, if that says anything about where this rates in the annals of 80s macho action cinema.
Sylvester Stallone stars as Lieutenant Marion Cobretti, a trigger-happy L.A. cop who shows little mercy to the scum of society. Naturally, he's the perfect man to protect a model (Brigitte Nielsen) who's the target of the Night Slasher (Brian Thompson), the head of a nasty cult that wants to create a new world order. They've got their sights set on Nielsen because she saw the Night Slasher exerting one of his more intense facial expressions on a particularly dark night, and that's apparently enough to deem her an eyewitness to a murder she clearly didn't see.
Anyway, it's obvious how the rest of the movie will play out; Cobretti will make out with the model, somehow keep her completely unharmed even when getting the both of them into lots of chases and shootouts, and he'll kill all the scum before riding off with the "babe" into the proverbial sunset. If you think I'm giving too much away, then you definitely haven't seen enough action movies.
While its an unwritten rule that one usually doesn't watch these kinds of action movies for plot, I think it's fair to say that one at least hopes for a fairly consistent flow in its narrative, or for the writer (in this case, Stallone himself) to offer up a compelling MacGuffin that bridges the action scenes well enough to hold interest between the shoot 'em up action. No such luck here; a fair portion of the plot is structured around the cult and their serial killings, but the film just glances over the cult's motives, and what is revealed sounds like it was (badly) ad-libbed by Brian Thompson on the spot.
Just as bad is the main story revolving around Cobretti protecting the model. Despite being a real-life couple at the time, Stallone and Nielsen have no chemistry, making their scenes together painfully awkward and unconvincing. Even Schwarzenegger and Rae Dawn Chong worked way better together in Commando and there wasn't even any attempted romantic tension in that relationship. If you actually rooted for Cobretti and the chick to get together by the end, you are a better person than me.
Even with all these faults, what ultimately kills the movie is that it's just not much fun. The action scenes are fairly plentiful, and a few of them are even reasonably decent (the big car chase is well-shot and edited, and a later chase scene where Cobretti mows down a lot of bikers from the back of a pick-up truck hints at the fun flick this could have been if it had boasted more self-knowingly outrageous moments like that), but without any care towards plot or character, it's hard to get involved in all the mayhem, especially when a lot of these scenes are mired in boring clichés (the final showdown is set in a foundry; argghh, I hate that setting!).
Even worse is the fact that almost everyone involved seemed painfully unaware they were making pulpy escapist cinema. Aside from a few very unsuccessful one-liners, Cobra is too serious in tone to genuinely enjoy. A lot of action movies that take themselves seriously manage to work because of (at least mild) attention to plot and characters; without these elements, the laziness of the filmmakers becomes more obvious as we watch a film that wishes to be taken seriously (there's a half-hearted attempt at a message about the hypocrisy and ineffectiveness of justice) without going into the effort to deserve that merit, and that's just plain insulting.