The Strong Arm Of The Law: Cobra

COBRA (Blu-ray)
Warner Home Video

Release date: September 5th, 2011
Certificate (UK): 18
Running time: 83 minutes

Year of production: 1986

Director: George Pan Cosmatos
Writer: Sylvester Stallone

Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Brigitte Nielsen, Reni Santoni, Brian Thompson

I grew up on a steady dose of Sylvester Stallone movies. Whether it was Rocky (1976), First Blood (1982), Over The Top (1987) or Lockup (1989), he just seemed like the hero you’d want to have around if you were in a jam.

He’d always have your back no matter how unpredictable or unorthodox his methods were, he was an all round good guy. Kind of. Almost. Nearly.

In Cobra we see a different side to this hero. He’s a much darker hero, someone we don’t learn very much about as we do with John Rambo or Rocky Balboa.

Based on the novel Fair Game by Paula Gosling, Marion Cobretti, or Cobra (Sylvester Stallone), as he prefers to be known, is something of a loose canon. He works on the Zombie Squad, an unofficial department of the LAPD, they’re they bottom line of law enforcement, the last resort when you want to get a job done.

In the opening scene we see him taking down an armed gunman and disarming a bomb in a supermarket during the busy Christmas period. He’s a man of few words and much action, but he doesn’t need to do much to make sure he hits his target. In his tight blue jeans, mirrored shades and chewing on an unlit match, he’s every inch the 80’s icon of law enforcement, a successor to Clint Eastwood’s Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry (1971).

It’s no wonder Ingrid (Brigitte Nielsen), a model he’s assigned to protect after she catches a glimpse of a killer – the Night Slasher – who’s responsible for a series of brutal murders, goes all weak in knees when he’s around. The tall and well built Danish beauty strikes quite an impression as well and we cop quite an eyeful during a photo-shoot sequence when it seems like one of her swimsuits is about to come loose in the upper seams from the body it’s struggling to straddle.

With Ingrid as the only one alive who can identify the Night Slasher, her life is in danger. We find out that spate of murders are linked to a wider network of lawlessness, a cult who’s prime objective is to usher in a New World Order and there’s a mole working in the department as well. Going on the run only serves to drawn them out, but that’s exactly Cobra’s way of thinking.

With its screenplay written by Stallone, the action is intensified and the dialogue is reduced which is fine because we don’t watch these movies to listen to people talk.

Gun fights, explosions, hand to hand combat and daredevil stunts, Cosmatos and Stallone pack them all in here and cap it off with a fantastic soundtrack as well that includes Miami Sound Machine, Jean Beauvoir and Bill Medley & Carmen Twillie.