Cobra (1986)

City cop is on the trail of a serial killer. Loaded with action and violence. Stallone fans will love this Rambo-like movie with Stallone on the chase instead of the run (imdb)
Cast and Information
Directed By: George P. Cosmatos
Written By: Sylvester Stallone, Paula Gosling
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Val Avery, Brian Thompson, David Rasche, Art LaFleur, Lee Garlington, Brigitte Nielsen, John Herzfeld, Andrew Robinson, Marco Rodríguez, Reni Santoni, Ross St. Phillip
Country: USA
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Cobra belongs to 21 collections
1. Psychotronic Film and Video Guides (collaborative: moderated by Gregzilla - 40 stars)
2. Based on a Book (collaborative: moderated by iconogassed - 21 stars)
3. Films available in HD (collaborative: moderated by kubricksucks - 13 stars)
4. The Gentlemen's Guide To Midnight Cinema Podcast (collaborative: moderated by Coheed - 9 stars)
5. Car chase (collaborative: moderated by iconogassed - 8 stars)
6. Synth soundtrack or score (collaborative: moderated by Ag0stoMesmer - 8 stars)
7. How Did This Get Made? (collaborative: moderated by theficionado - 8 stars)
8. Based On Novel (collaborative: moderated by tathiel - 7 stars)
9. Books by Women that were made into Movies (collaborative: moderated by Dunstan-xxx - 5 stars)
10. Top 3000 movies with the most votes on IMDb (public: fanfic - 5 stars)
11. Failed Franchise Attempts (collaborative: moderated by Hailey - 4 stars)
12. The Cannon Group (collaborative: moderated by ShogunRua - 4 stars)
13. L.A. sleaze (collaborative: moderated by mattburgess - 3 stars)
14. Best worst films (public: Hadleyreis - 3 stars)
15. Snakes (collaborative - 2 stars)
16. Savage street gangs, bikers & punks (collaborative: moderated by mattburgess - 2 stars)
17. 80's buff guy movies (collaborative: moderated by Luna6ix)
18. Cinema Sewer (collaborative: moderated by mattburgess)
19. Eric's Bad Movies (public: BeeDub)
20. Forrest Watch List (public: ForrestQ)
21. DoObejrzenia (public: peeroog)
Browse the full list of collections
Stars | User | Rating | |
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Barthalen | 39 19th |
What do you call a guy that wears sunglasses indoors, drives a vintage car, listens to shitty eighties music, feels the need to comment on everyone's eating habits and cuts his pizza with a pair of scissors? A hipster douchebag. What do you call the same guy in 1986? Cobra.
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INDYATMN | 77 48th |
This isn't "good" per se, but it's quick, distinct (Cosmatos shoots the criminals like they're murderers in a slasher film - & they kind of are) & there's funny moments of unintentional camp. It's one thing for Sly to try to inject some - cough!- "social commentary" into this violent cartoon by way of his absurd caricatures of soft-on-crime liberals, but when the criminals are all batsh-t insane psychos who spend their days clanking their axes together in unison you have to laugh.
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terrymac | 40 10th |
Absolute dross, but not the sort of dross that'll have you switching off partway through. Strangely enjoyable dross, then. It's ludicrous, and pretty much nothing makes sense. Stallone's character is a kitchen sink of 70s/80s action tropes, and not one person here is a believable human being. It's pleasantly violent, and over pretty quickly, so you too might be able to sit through this.
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BillyShears | 60 34th |
Pepsi present’s Cobra Stallone tone deaf on what’s cool and badass which obviously rules. Way too many people wearing cabbie hats in this like the costume designer stumbled on a box of them. The only thing that factory produces at the end of the movie is widows.
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TonythePony | 38 6th |
There's something quite charming about a gang of axe-wielding maniacs who care about choreography. *ching* *ching*
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lrampartl | 61 48th |
You ever notice how they try to get action heroes over with a gimmick? Cobra has like eight. The super gun, sunglasses, old timey car, matchstick in the mouth, gloves, etc. Still, a decent little tough cop movie. Good 80's cheese junk.
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Ytadel | 3 28th |
There's a remarkable lack of intellectual and artistic ambition present in this right-wing fascism fantasy / 80s action paint-by-numbers. That said, it's difficult to truly hate an 80s action flick, isn't it?
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PeaceAnarchy | 34 2nd |
Did you think Dirty Harry was a liberal pussy who was too sympathetic? Were you also annoyed that the acting in that film was too good? Well, then Cobra should be right up your alley. Even ignoring the ridiculous, and overt, appeals to fascism, this is just a really badly made film with a few exciting action scenes to alleviate the tedium of Stallone's mumbling.
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saucyjack | 70 49th |
Entertainingly cheesy. Try not to laugh when you see businessmen clanging battle axes above their heads.
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Luna6ix | 73 44th |
"Cobra" is a every tough guy action movie distilled down to one mess of tropes and ridiculous awesomeness. If I was twelve in 1986, this would have probably been the coolest thing I ever saw, but action movies have changed a lot over the years and "Cobra" held up about as well a Brigitte Nielsen's looks, not that she was ever much of a looker.
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3 | DougCL | 100 98th |
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the most perfect example of the shit-stupid 80s action wankfest. and its an absolute pleasure to watch every single time.
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LookJabba... | 6 41st |
Cobra is very much something of a guilty pleasure. The plot is wafer thin and there's nothing particularly memorable. But growing up I thought this was such a cool Sylvester Stallone film. It's by no means one of his best films, but it's one of his coolest. He's called Marion Cobretti and convincingly makes it sound cool. Enough said. The action scenes are good, but the performances and script are woeful. Stallone cutting pizza with scissors steals the show though. Stupidly cool and very 80's.
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KasperL | 75 77th |
Holds up well. Stallone has some cool oneliners in what is essentially part slasher with Nielsen as the final girl and the always creepy Thompson as the killer. The whole thing oozes 80s-ness and is pretty enjoyable.
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2 | flyingwhales | 90 94th |
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Marian Cobretti is going to shoot the hell out of anyone who doesn't like this movie. That's the kind of cop he is.
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Cinema_Asia | 45 7th |
This easily falls into the category of "so bad it's good" because of the stoic seriousness it takes itself but leaves lots of room for inadvertent camp appeal. It also embodies 80's violent cheese quite well with Stallone trying to be the ice cold apathetic cop. Plus he walks around with a totally impractical looking sidearm while he mows down raving punk/biker thugs. The best part is Stallone cutting pizza with scissors though.
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glumpy_99 | 59 16th |
Watchable but ultimately disposable assembly-line 80s action trash, highlighted by two exciting car chases. Cosmatos' leaden, journeyman direction means many of the action scenes feel oddly deflated, despite the copious (and grotesque) blood-shed. Stallone gives more or less what you would expect from him (lacking the sense of self-kidding that Arnie would bring to this sort of thing) and the film suffers for a lack of an interesting bad guy, or even discernable motivations for the villainy.
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2 | ericambler | 38 8th |
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For Stallone completists only. Sly cuts a piece of pizza with a pair of scissors.
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Paxton | 69 56th |
He cuts his pizza with a scissors. Your argument is invalid.
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Pumpernikiel | 57 23rd |
Kinda stupid movie, but I had fun watching it, and that's what is most important.
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Yiannos | 43 10th |
Like most violent urban cop thrillers after Dirty Harry, Cobra is pro-tyranny propaganda, but it's a little more blatant and extreme in how it goes about delivering that message. The hellish vision of the world in Cobra is dangerous to the point of absurdity: the only solution is to let rogue cops mow down criminals with weird looking guns. It pretends to deal with the problem of social violence, within an action film context, but it simply exploits real fears about it.
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eveelun | 50 11th |
Laughable example of 80s vigilante justice. Cobra doesn't play by the rules, he can't afford to when there's a gang of serial killers out there working together! Pretty absurd, but it's no match for Death Wish 3 in terms of conservative paranoia.
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doctor7 | 11 6th |
Pretty much contains all the reasons why Stallone's career tanked. It's a garbage movie full of terrible dialog, awful characters on both sides of the law and shoddy film making. Avoid unless you're a Stallone fan who loves his bad movies.
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TheDenizen | 30 11th |
Not as wretched as its reputation, but man, it's not good.
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1 | jcdracula | 0 17th |
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When Cosmatos teamed up with Stallone, magic happened. This is completely insane garbage, fueled by right wing paranoia and filled with loads of unintentional comedy and surrealism.
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joseywales | 60 34th |
Better (in a corny 80's action way) than I remembered. An easy fun watch for fans of the genre, just don't take it too seriously and you'll have a good time. Also am I the only one who thinks the villain looks like a jacked-up Sean William Scott?
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bowfinger | 20 14th |
Written by Stallone? The bitch can barely act!
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1 | caffe | 57 45th |
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I truly enjoy this stupid, stupid piece of shit. I love how incredibly, wondrously, unironically stupid it is.
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1 | hehheh | 3 62nd |
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This is so much better than Commando.
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Der_Barney | 70 15th |
So crappy it's actually kinda cool.
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Neonman | 64 22nd |
Standard storyline that should be eased through with some cheesy '80s moments to help you get by. The action sequences are decent, but as impressive as the stunt-work is, it just feels like they are performing the stunts for the sake of how impressive they are without really flowing into the narrative of the action scenes. This may sound like a nit-pick, but there's not a whole lot else to analyse here; it's just a typical '80s action film.
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Castroph | 4 28th |
The montage is the best part of the movie, other than that you have Stallone walking around in boots cutting pizzas with scissors and drinking beer in a supermarket with a deranged psycho.
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begoniabol | 15 18th |
It's basically an 80's music video of an hour long till the end fight starring Sylvi hoisted into a pair of tight jeans and shirt and a woman wearing too tight clothes as well. The end fight is boring, stupid, cheesy and sweaty
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wetwillies | 80 37th |
Viewed May 15, 2021. Will be thinking about the pizza scissors forever.
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overrated | 22 13th |
When right-wing action heroes don't have witty one-liners when dispatching bad guys they come across as assholes. Evidenced by the rapid cut after the death of the villain here, as if even the filmmakers themselves realized it was a bit much.
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calinki | 65 24th |
bonus rating for "feel the heat" and the sunglasses
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hazelhawks | 27 6th |
Wow! Totally forgot about John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band. Cool photography and fetishistic design aside, this Stallone vanity project is basically a really dumb attempt to turn First Blood inside out. Why?! But great to see Brian Thompson (alien bounty hunter from x-files) as a wacky maniac. James Woods' Cop movie may have been making fun of Cobra... but I'm not for sure.
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Pfightmaster | 43 22nd |
I love this stupid piece of garbage. The action hits hard, Sly is way over the top in the title roll and everything is possible in the ways of vigilante justice, as long as it's bad guys who die a horrible, horrible death.
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1 | Mr Vincent | 35 13th |
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Incredibly stupid and awesome at the same time.
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Average Percentile 27.41% from 1479 Ratings | ![]() |