Review: Cobra

Typical fascist American action fodder from the Reagan-era, with Sly Stallone playing Marion ‘Cobra’ Cobretti (I wouldn’t call him Marion, though. Just a tip), a tough cop in a special unit that targets society’s scummiest and most dangerous crims. And blows ‘em away real good. Make no mistake, though Cobretti, ain’t a team player, despite having a partner in Reni Santoni. In fact he tends to act like a one-man army, a really, really violent one-man army, which puts him at odds with colleagues like anal-retentive Andrew Robinson. But when ‘The Night Slasher’ (really a gang of psychos, led by Brian Thompson and his corrupt cop lover Lee Garlington) starts offing people, Cobretti is called in to hunt them down. Brigitte Nielsen (AKA Mrs. Stallone for a time) plays a fashion model who is the only one to have caught a glimpse of one of the killers, and thus Cobretti is assigned to protect her, whilst trying to bring down the Night Slashers in the process. Art LaFleur plays Cobretti’s police captain, David Rasche is a fashion photographer.

Talk about a poster in search of a movie. This 1986 George Pan Cosmatos (who went on to make the terrific “Tombstone” and previously made the solid “Cassandra Crossing”) actioner is a well-directed and well-shot film. It just sucks, is all. It’s not as bad as my recollections from my childhood had me thinking, but it is a monotonous, dull “Dirty Harry” rip-off nonetheless (right down to Reni Santoni essentially playing an older version of his “Dirty Harry” character, and “Dirty Harry” villain Robinson plays an a-hole cop here, admittedly a fine casting choice, as is Santoni). I mean, there’s not a single original bone in its body.

Sly, who wrote the screenplay himself, gives the worst (dramatic) performance of his entire career. He overdoes the emotionless tough guy thing. It’s all ego and sunglasses here. So stupid and awful is he that his sunglasses give a more nuanced, measured performance. Meanwhile, I can chalk up Nielsen’s shoddy work in “Red Sonja” (an underrated film) as being green to the business, but here she’s just flat-out wooden, as she and Sly make for a decidedly deadly dull (ooh, alliteration!) on-screen pairing. Nielsen’s wig sucks, too. The villains aren’t any better, though. Thompson has an imposing and otherworldly appearance on screen, but that’s about it. The sight of character actress Lee Garlington trying to butch it up like a “Dirty Harry” (or “Sudden Impact” to be exact) villainess is certainly odd. She’s normally solid, but her psycho act is pathetic here. Her and Thompson just make their end of things utterly ridiculous, though Thompson’s spiked knife is pretty cool. Speaking of ridiculous, special mention must go to a totally gratuitous montage of Sly and Santoni doing their cop thing on the neon-lit streets intercut with Nielsen posing for an arty 80s New Wave fashion shoot. It’s set to some godawful song in the soft metal vein of Survivor or Night Ranger or something (Other songs on the soundtrack, meanwhile, have a distinct “Beverly Hills Cop” vibe that doesn’t fit). The icing on the cake being the cameo appearance by David Rasche (“Delirious”, TV’s “Sledge Hammer”) as the photographer in the scene. I can’t really explain why, but Rasche’s mere participation here just cracked me up. The music score by Sylvester Levay is a total John Carpenter (“Halloween”, “Assault on Precinct 13”, “Escape From New York”) rip-off, though it does admittedly assist in giving the film a minimalist-yet-stylised, muscular Walter Hill (“The Driver”, “The Long Riders”) vibe. Speaking of being stylised, the cinematography by Ric Waite (Walter Hill’s western “The Long Riders”, the ultimate Reagan-era fantasy “Red Dawn”) is incredible, the film’s one redeemable quality. I mean, this is one damn fine-looking movie, right from the opening. Sly’s opening narration is horribly delivered, but the following shot of him in silhouette riding into camera on his bike with a red background? Now that is cool. Although it is sometimes dark, the lighting is so impressive that you can still see everything fine. There’s some amazing shots of light coming through slats and windows.

It’s certainly among Sly’s worst films, if a bit better than “Rhinestone” and “Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot”. This is pretty ugly, clichéd, and uninteresting stuff. A great looking piece of junk that ultimately ends up not being worth a damn. Apparently it has a small cult following, though. But then, so do “Eraserhead”, “The Room”, and “Killer Klowns from Outer Space” and they’re even worse.

Rating: D-