Cobra (1986)

A 1986 action film starring sylvester stallone as lieutenant marion “cobra” cobretti, a los angeles detective in the elite zombie squad who is called in when all other police procedure fails. george p. cosmatos directs. the film began as stallone’s rejected rewrite of beverly hills cop and became a pure, uncompromising action vehicle: black sunglasses, a matchstick, a custom 1950 mercury, and a philosophy of law enforcement that can be summarized as “you’re a disease, and i’m the cure.”

What the film does

When a mass shooting at an la supermarket becomes a hostage crisis, cobretti is called in. he kills the shooter mid-rant about social darwinism and a “new world.” the incident turns out to be one of many violent crimes committed by the new world, a cult that believes in killing the weak. model ingrid knudsen becomes their next target after witnessing the cult’s leader, the night slasher, on a killing spree. cobretti is assigned to protect her. after multiple attempts on their lives and the discovery that lapd officer nancy stalk is the cult’s second-in-command, cobretti takes knudsen to the small town of san remos. the cult attacks the town at dawn on motorcycles. the surviving members chase cobretti and knudsen to a steel mill, where cobretti impales the night slasher on a hook that drags him into a furnace. cobretti punches his desk-bound nemesis detective monte in the face and rides off with knudsen on a motorcycle.

Why it is in the canon

Cobra is stallone at the absolute peak of his 1980s iconography. every frame is designed around him: the mirrored sunglasses that never come off indoors, the matchstick that migrates from one corner of his mouth to the other between takes, the leather gloves he puts on before every fight. he uses a jatimatic smg because it looks like nothing else. the film is violent enough that the original cut got an x rating and had to be trimmed to 87 minutes from over two hours. it is also proof that stallone’s instincts were not wrong when he tried to turn beverly hills cop into a straight action movie: cobra made $160 million and landed in the top 20 films of 1986. the supporting cast includes ren santoni and andrew robinson, both from dirty harry, the film stallone openly admired. brian thompson plays the night slasher as a man who auditioned seven times and was told by stallone that the character is “simply evil.” this is the film where stallone, asked to describe his character, said “bruce springsteen with a badge.”