An action film that borders on horror, with good actors and an atmosphere that is hard to achieve today. Sylvester Stallone is a great choice for the role of a tough cop who is brutal towards criminals. Cobra despises crime and journalists, plays rough and does not forgive anyone. Today, it is almost impossible to make a film like this, with such a great character and a vicious action full of bloodshed. The film is extremely entertaining, well directed, and the sountrack is great. An underrated film that has definitely achieved cult status.

With Cobra I think Sylvester Stallone went over the top with his tough screen persona. There is a limit as to how much the movie-going public will swallow. Note that he hasn't done a Cobra II in his career, dare I say no one's approached him with the project.

Stallone is Lieutenant Mario Cabretti and he functions as a kind of one man SWAT team for the LAPD. When we first meet him, he's been sent for to dispatch a particularly loathsome cretin who's shooting up a supermarket. Dirty Harry couldn't have done a better job.

However Stallone thinks this guy and his psychotic crime might be connected to a series of brutal knifings that have taken place throughout the city recently. Of course he can't get anyone to believe him, still he gets on the task force about those killings.

And he draws another assignment, protect the only person to survive an attack, model Birgitte Nielsen. But he's frustrated at every turn as this gang of bikers seem always to be a step ahead of them. Not that this urban version of Rambo isn't up to what they can dish out.

Cobra was a film created for Stallone and Nielsen whom he was involved with at the time. Nielsen is a beautiful statuesque model who acts on the level of a high school production. Did you ever think Sly Stallone would outact anyone in any film?

The film is a ripoff of Dirty Harry, but Clint Eastwood never insulted the audience's intelligence the way this film does. However it did have both Reni Santoni and Andy Robinson in the cast who were also in Dirty Harry. Robinson who was the psychotic Scorpio in Dirty Harry is Stallone's supervisor in Cobra. But poor Santoni who was the first partner Dirty Harry left behind was also injured aiding Stallone in that final shootout with the biker gang.

I believe the Tom Hanks-Dan Ackroyd film satiric version of Dragnet used the biker gang in Cobra as part of the satire. Cobra also made a sweep of the Razzie Awards winning Worst Picture, Worst Actor for Stallone, Worst Actress for Birgitte Nielsen and three others.

At night you could hear the plaintive cry of Sylvester Stallone singing to Birgitte Nielsen, "yo, what I did for love."

Typical action-packed mid '80s fare, along the lines of RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II or COMMANDO in that it depicts a whole army of bad guys getting stylishly wiped out in various ways. This short, sharp movie is classic cheese action entertainment with little plot and lots of stuntmen. Sylvester Stallone is in his element as the charismatic loner, a clichéd maverick cop whose hard-as-nails wisecracks are actually funny for a change. Whether he's wasting a supermarket-siege psycho in the opening moments or machine-gunning an army of motorbike-riding weirdos in the film's eye-popping finale, Stallone is in his prime here although ironically the film bombed at the box office (which explains the lack of sequels). Those super-cool '80s-style sunglasses help too.

The plot rather successfully tries to emulate a slasher movie as it opens with repeated scenes of a psychopathic killer murdering innocent female victims with a rather nasty-looking shiny knife. Despite being gore-free the murders are rather sleazy, employing some fine mad acting from veteran hardman villain Brian Thompson and some icky sound effects to make up for the lack of claret on view. After a tense and surprisingly effective hospital stalk-and-slash sequence the film drops this mock-horror angle, instead moving into comic-book all-out action stuff as Stallone engages in a crowd-pleasing car chase, full of vehicles jumping over hills (like in every other '80s cop film),mindless destruction and a few cool stunts like the boat crash and the car-park jump. Then there's the acclaimed (in the realms of cheesy action fans, that is) finale, in which Stallone and his crew retreat to a countryside motel as a hideout and are attacked by an entire army of psychopaths who are mown down by Stallone's machine gun.

The climax takes place in one of those clichéd factory locations which gives Stallone further chance to burn, break and butcher the opposition, rarely breaking a sweat and tossing off more wisecracks at every opportunity (one quip - "You have the right to remain silent - forever" to a burning victim - was needlessly cut from the film by British censors for being too sadistic). Finally it's the one on one fight with the 'Night Slasher' (cool name),the head honcho who ends up being impaled on a hook and fried in a kiln. What more could one ask for? Well, a real story perhaps, a realistic script and good acting. They don't come close to any of those three in this film yet it remains a largely entertaining enterprise due to the fast-pacing and endless action, plus comic relief that works. It's funny because it's so clichéd and enjoyably brainless fun.

Stallone is supported by Brigitte Nielsen (RED SONJA),who doesn't really get to be anything else other than a damsel-in-distress as the witness who becomes a stalked victim, and veteran Andrew Robinson (HELLRAISER) as the antagonistic superior. Reni Santoni is effective as a likable sidekick whilst Brian Thompson excels in what is one of his scariest (in both physical appearance and hefty bulk) performances to date. Aside from this, there's not much to say. Endless explosions, destruction, people being shot repeatedly and more stuntmen than you can shake a stick at - if that sounds like your idea of fun then by all means give this mindless slice of '80s cheesiness a try.