Cobra (1986)

There's a moment in Cobra where Sylvester Stallone, sunglasses on, toothpick in mouth, dispatches a bad guy with the kind of one-liner that no actual human being has ever said in the history of conversation, and I sat there grinning like an idiot. That's this film in a nutshell. It doesn't ask much of you, and in return it delivers exactly what it says on the tin.

Stallone plays Marion "Cobra" Cobretti, a cop so cool he eats cold pizza with scissors. That sentence alone should tell you whether this film is for you. He's part of a special crimes unit, he wears a leather jacket, he shoots first and doesn't really bother with questions, and there's a gang of axe-wielding cult members causing havoc across Los Angeles. That's your plot. That's all your plot. Nobody came here for a character study.

What Cobra does well, it does with tremendous confidence. The action is slick and punchy, the pacing never lets you get bored, and Stallone is utterly committed to being the most effortlessly badass man in any given room. There's a shamelessness to it that I find genuinely charming. This isn't a film with doubts about itself. It knows exactly what it is and struts accordingly. Some films try to be cool and fail. Cobra doesn't try. It simply assumes.

The one-liners are peak 80s. Cheesy doesn't quite cover it, but cheesy is the right word. They land with a thud and a wink, and I was quoting them under my breath before the scene had even moved on. That's a skill, in its own daft way. Comparing this to something like First Blood, which is a genuinely great film with real weight to it, feels almost unfair. Cobra isn't trying to be that. Where First Blood has something to say, Cobra has a toothpick and a shotgun, and it's happy with that arrangement.

Could you level criticism at it? Of course. The villain is thin, the romance subplot is largely there to give someone for Cobra to protect, and the whole thing operates in that particular 80s mode where logic takes a back seat to spectacle. But criticising Cobra for those things is like criticising a roller coaster for not being educational. You knew what the ride was before you got on.

Stallone is an interesting figure in all of this. The mid-80s version of him is a genuine cultural phenomenon, and you can see why. There's a physical and tonal authority he carries that very few actors of any era can match when they're locked into a role like this. He'd already done Rambo: First Blood Part II the year before, and Cobra feels like a companion piece in some ways, another chapter in the myth of the lone, impossible hero who operates above the rules because the rules can't keep up with him. It's a very 80s fantasy, and it's one I don't entirely mind indulging for 87 minutes.

Three stars. It's not clever, it's not deep, and it won't linger with you for long after the credits roll. But it delivers on every single promise it makes, and sometimes that's all you need from a Friday night film. You know what you're getting with Cobra, and you get it, full stop.

Rating: ★★★  | Year: 1986  | Watched: 2025-06-28

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Watch in the UK
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