COBRA is not a great Stallone movie, but Stallone does play a cop named Marion “THE COBRA” Cobretti, and in this crazy world that’s gotta count for something. In the opening scene a ranting maniac goes into a super market, kills a bunch of people and takes the rest hostage. The police are helpless so they “call in the Cobra.”
Cobretti struts in wearing sunglasses and chewing on a matchstick. You’d think he’d want to have the full power of vision at his disposal in a situation like this, but he chooses fashion instead – not a great character trait for a human being, but acceptable for an action movie hero. If you want to get picky Dirty Harry probaly should’ve put down his hot dog to foil that bank robbery, but he didn’t, and we admire him for that. (read the rest of this shit…)
Long ago, before the rogue Finn Renny Harlin’s Samson locks were shorn, he was not the director of DEEP BLUE SEA. He was the director of DIE HARD 2. Or DIE HARDER as everybody thought it was called then. (This was before the internet, so I couldn’t explain to them that it was called DIE HARD 2.) Well, CLIFFHANGER is another movie from that o.g. Renny Harlin, or Renny Harlin Classic. And from where I stand this may be his finest McClane-free picture.
A couple weeks ago I saw a theater marquee that said APOCALYPTO and ROCKY BALBOA on it. And I thought damn, Mad Max and Rambo are both directing movies now. Tryin to join the ranks of the Badass Laureates like Clint and Takeshi. While my man Seagal is busy revolutionizing the world of DTV self expression, these guys are going in a more societally accepted direction. Of these two action hero directors, Crazy Fuckin’ Mel obviously gets the medal for ambition because he made an epic about a culture rarely portrayed on film, in a language never spoken on film. He’s moving forward. Stallone is moving backwards but that’s okay, he’s taking care of some personal business. He’s putting a cap on the ROCKY series. And doing a fine job of it in my opinion.
