My Cultural Diet

One of my favorite things to do as an adult is watch movies that caught my eye as a kid but that I never actually got to watch because, well, I was a kid. Case in point: George P. Cosmatos’s Cobra, a film whose poster artwork is seared into my memory. The platonic ideal of the “lone wolf” cop films that were all the rage in the ’80s, Cobra stars Sylvester Stallone as Marion “Cobra” Cobretti, an unorthodox cop tasked with protecting a model (Brigitte Nielsen) from a violent cult leader and serial killer (Brian Thompson). Cobretti proves just as psychopathic as his quarry, and willing to ignore such trivial things as civil rights in his pursuit of psychos, instead uttering cool lines like “You’re a disease, and I’m the cure” and “This is where the law stops and I start, sucker!” before offing the bad guys. That sort of policing is obviously anathema in our present age, and for good reason, but it’s hard to be too offended by Cobra because it’s just so boring. Stallone tries to play Cobretti as stoic and bad-ass with his sunglasses, cobra-emblazoned Colt pistol, and ever-present toothpick, but he has zero personality; the cult leader is a complete blank; and the film’s attempts to ratchet up the tension largely fall flat. Cobra does earn some points for style, and there’s an idea for a really cool film in there somewhere, but honestly, it’s nowhere near as lurid or exciting as the Cannon Films logo on the box might suggest.

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