Cobra (87 minutes)

"You're a disease, and I'm the cure."

Welcome back to The 90-Minute Movie! I’m sure you’ve noticed that I’ve been posting every other week (or maybe not!) I’ve been working a new job and am very focused on everything going on there. I also decided now would be a good time to get a new dog. Which is a chaotic life choice normally, let alone alongside a brand new job. Needless to say - I’m losing my head a bit. 

I’m finding this new cadence useful and will keep it going for the time being. So don’t freak out, I’m here, just not as frequently. And if you don’t want to miss a THING please remember to subscribe (and tell a friend!)

Ok, on to the show.

I told myself I wouldn’t write about this movie. I swore up and down there was nothing to say about it and that I would just pretend like my recent screening of it didn’t happen. I was ready to make this movie a Soap Dish and move on with my life. But this week something was calling to me. It said…”Why not challenge yourself? You’re already drowning in work and dog walks. Add one more thing to your plate and see what happens!” The movie of course is Cobra (1986, 87 minutes) starring Sylvester Stallone. 

As a kid, we were a major action movie house but NOT a Stallone house. I should call my mom and ask her (or maybe she’ll be so kind and just comment below) WHY this is. Part of me thinks it is because my mom didn’t like hyper-masculine plots or movies that glorified war. We were never shielded from gun violence (and actually I think I saw Cliffhanger at a questionably young age) as long as the movie had some other merits. This is all to say… I didn’t grow up with an innate passion for Stallone (or Schwarzenegger for that matter). That kind of blind loyalty was reserved for what I call the “action-lite” stars -- Gibson, Murphy, Russell, and Ford. So, sitting down to Cobra I was already at a heavy disadvantage in my ability to suspend disbelief and enjoy it. 

This is a movie with a plot and no character development. It moves from Point A to Point B, but nothing changes for our characters. It feels very empty. Marion “Cobra” Cobretti is a rogue police officer chasing a secret society called the New Order, a group committing a series of violent crimes and murders across the city. (If you asked me why now, I couldn’t tell you.) Model Ingrid (Brigitte Nielsen) becomes a witness to one of these murders and needs to be promptly put into police custody with Cobra and his partner Gonzales (Reni Santoni). They are hunted by the group’s leader known only as Night Slasher (Brian Thompson) and of course, he and Cobra wind up in a violent showdown at the end in a barn (or factory?) 

This movie left me with a LOT of questions but one of the biggest is surrounding its view of police. On the one hand, this feels very much like a glorification of police work. Cobra gets to do what he wants, wear what he wants, sleep with the woman he is supposed to be protecting, and kill literally dozens of people with no real consequences. On the other hand, Cobra is often admonished by his superiors for not following standard police protocol. They’re consistently asking him to not kill suspects without cause and he sort of, rolls his eyes and bats them away. Cobra believes in the law, but not enough to care about the lives of “bad guys”. And I know what a lot of you are thinking. This movie doesn’t have a message other than “Damn Stallone is cool.” And you’d be right. 

Stallone looks GOOD in this movie. He is young, fresh, and super lean. He’s in his sex symbol era and for maybe the first time I got the appeal. Similarly, Brigitte Nielsen looks beautiful but suffered a lot of shit for her performance in this movie. I’m not sure why she was the target - no one is that good. Except for Reni Santoni as Gonzales. This man plays police partner with so much charm and dedication I could actually believe he and Cobra were best friends (even when Stallone was giving me nothing). He is a bright spot in an otherwise dull landscape of performance. (You may know Gonzales as “Poppie” from Seinfeld.) 

Santoni belonged in a more cohesive and thoughtful movie. Something, like, oh I don’t know, Beverly Hills Cop. And why am I going here? Well my friends, that is because we wouldn’t have Cobra without Beverly Hills Cop. You’re reading that right. I won’t get into the ENTIRE saga (you can read that here) but I will give you the Cliffs Notes version (or the ChatGPT version I guess, do kids still use Cliffs Notes?) Stallone was originally cast as Axel Foley in Beverly Hills Cop, only he insisted on the character’s name being Axel “Cobra” Cobretti and he rewrote large chunks of the script to have way more action and explosions and a lot less humor. Stallone’s version of the script was so expensive the producers of Beverly Hills Cop asked him to kindly leave. And he did - taking his bits of the script with him. These bits would ultimately become Cobra. Both were financially successful in the end, though Beverly Hills Cop was the highest grossing film of 1984.

Stallone has said he regrets not directing Cobra himself and feels it could have been a better film overall if he had. That’s kind of an easy out but I’ll give it to him in this case because we simply don’t know if he could have saved this macho murder fest. But maybe he could have clarified if we’re suppose to believe in the cops, or resent them. Cobretti’s badge allows him to kill people without consequence, but I got the feeling he hated hiding behind his badge and would have loved to just kill everyone boldly. 

Cobra was hard to watch for many reasons, but it is considered a cult classic by many. If you are one of these people I’d love to hear from you. Is it nostalgia? Is it Stallone? What draws you back to this one time and time again? Let me know in the comments. And if you haven’t seen it you can give it a try, just don’t say I didn’t warn you.