Cobra [Blu-Ray]

Say what you will about Sly Stallone, but the guy may be America's last sentimentalist ― usually, anyways. Films he's written, starred in and/or directed, from Paradise Alley through to Rocky Balboa and The Expendables, tend to suture in a resounding, schmaltzy heart beating behind all that taut muscle. Not Cobra though; Stallone's 1986 urban actioner casts the Italian Stallion as a Harry Callahan-styled urban vigilante with a badge. To paraphrase the man himself, where the law stops, Marion "Cobra" Cobrettii begins. This means that when the law, in its uptight, repressively legal form (here played by Andrew Robinson, with a terrible trench coat and worse haircut), gets too caught up in red tape, Cobra can come in and chuck grenades around and make the world a safer place. In his first and last onscreen adventure, Cobra squares off against a murderous doomsday cult led by the Night Slasher (Brian Thompson). The cult angle ties the film in, however tangentially, with the whole Geraldo-propagated Satanic panic of mid-'80s America, which makes Cobra seem relevant, however tangentially. Otherwise, it's a pretty unremarkable '80s action movie, even by '80s action movie standards. The one-liners thud, the action set-pieces are spoiled by Cosmatos' hack-ish editing rhythms and the up-conversion to Blu-Ray doesn't render anything super-crisply so much as give the film the texture of a late night softcore porno. Features are nil, save for a brief, uninformative "Making Of" and a commentary by Cosmatos that, given his thick Mediterranean accent, is laughably hard to understand.