An unforgettable action movie classic was born in 1986 - it was Sly's revenge for not being the Beverly Hills cop.
Every domestic film fan knows this painfully macho one-liner by heart. At least those who were kids during the golden age of the domestic VHS era, in the late '80s and early '90s, and sat in front of their rich friend's video recorder all summer long.
The 1986 Cobra, of course, reached us years later, sometime around 1987-88, when VICO-films' major rival, Intervideo, made the dubbed version. Before that, everyone here knew Sylvester Stallone only as the bumbling Rocky and the one-man army Rambo, but with Cobra, he instantly became synonymous with coolness.
Erre természetesen a hazai fusiipar is ráérzett, és a céllövöldékben azonnal megjelentek a hárompálcás Bíró Ica-poszterek mellett the Kobra movie posters (a panellakások kisszobáinak közkedvelt dekorációja a Hands of Steel-poster mellett), a Mokép az Ifjúsági Lapkiadó Vállalattal és Fazekas Attila rajzolóval együttműködve pedig megcsinálta 1988-ban a megfordítós képregényváltozatot is - gyaníthatóan a jogtulajdonos Cannon stúdió és Stallone tudta nélkül.
I remember, back in school, every boy had a pair of sunglasses, crafted a belt buckle for his belt, and chewed on matches during breaks. We probably would have cut the pizza ordered to the house with scissors, just like the fearless Inspector Cobretti in the movie - only, at the threshold of the regime change, none of us really knew what pizza ordering was.
So why was the Cobra so cool? Because it spectacularly combined the two most popular action movie genres of the era, the silent, muscle-bound action hero (see Rambo, Dutch, John Matrix, T-800 and their ilk) and the occasionally investigating cop who interprets the law in his own unique way (see 48 Hours, Lethal Weapon, Beverly Hills Cop and other buddy cop classics). This similarity is not coincidental: Stallone was originally supposed to be Axel Foley in Beverly Hills Cop, but his appearance was deemed too tough, so Eddie Murphy ultimately got the role. Since Sly also had a say in the screenplay, he preferred to transfer his ideas written for that film into his own cop movie.
The story is of course not a big bang. Kobra, the tough street cop, is investigating a motorcycle gang made up of axe-wielding serial killers and stumbles upon a sect that harbors world domination plans, hammering hammers above their heads. He ruthlessly hunts them down to the last man, then rides off into the sunset with the rescued woman - played by Stallone's then-wife, the era's super hot sex symbol, Brigitte Nielsen.
The essence is not the complexity of the case to be solved or the cunning of the investigation, but the path leading to the gang leader itself: how the cowboy-mentality Kobra imposes order in a world turned upside down, and restores order in the degenerate big city. A typical '80s macho movie - but precisely for this reason, it can be watched again at any time.