Why Sylvester Stallone Regrets A Cult Classic Action Thriller

Rarely has a decade been as closely tied to a film genre in pop culture as the 1980s are to ridiculous action movies. The era of Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and others of their stripe certainly blend well into the ’90s, but the ’80s is where the big, beefy, sweaty, machine-gun-toting hero became a staple of cinema. Of course, as with any genre, there were better and worse attempts at hitting the mark with this particular brand of action film. Titles like “The Terminator” and “First Blood” gave credibility to their respective muscular stars, eschewing the camp and absurdity for high-concept sci-fi and gritty political character drama, respectively. But then there were the less artistically sophisticated films — features like Schwarzenegger’s “Commando” and Stallone’s “Cobra,” which came out back-to-back in 1985 and 1986.

“Cobra,” specifically, has become something of a cult classic, in large part because of its cartoonish protagonist. In the film, Stallone plays Lieutenant Marion “Cobra” Cobretti, a member of the Los Angeles Police Department who wears aviators, chews matchsticks, drives a gorgeous 1950 Mercury Eight, and cuts leftover pizza with scissors. The movie is more “Dirty Harry” than “Rambo,” and according to Stallone, it’s one he doesn’t look back on too fondly.

“‘Cobra’ to me, was half-baked,” Stallone admitted during a talkback at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival (via JoBlo). “I could have done better, but I wasn’t concentrating enough.”

Stallone didn’t just star in “Cobra”; he wrote the screenplay, as he had done when he broke out onto the Hollywood scene with “Rocky.” Before Eddie Murphy was cast in “Beverly Hills Cop,” the studio was in discussions with Stallone for the part, but he ended up reworking the script significantly to make it less of a comedy and more of an action thriller. That version of the film was rejected, but Stallone continued to tweak its premise until he wound up with the screenplay that became “Cobra.”

While the film obviously has his creative fingerprints all over, Stallone seems to think it would have been more successful had he been even more involved in making it, guiding the vision from his page to the screen. “I felt as though that’s something I should have directed, and I didn’t, and I regret that,” he explained during the aforementioned TIFF talkback. “That’s one thing about making movies, aside from watching your hairline recede, you go, ‘God, why didn’t I try harder?'”

“Cobra” was panned by critics and received six Razzie Award nominations in 1987, including for Worst Picture and a Worst Actor nod for Stallone. Today, it’s certainly not regarded as one of Stallone’s best films, but it’s also managed to stick around in pop culture for one reason or another. Fans of the genre still appreciate its absurdity, and it’s even been cited by both director Nicolas Winding Refn and star Ryan Gosling as an inspiration for their critically acclaimed 2011 thriller “Drive.”

The continued popularity of “Cobra” in certain circles would seem to suggest there’s merit there beyond what critics and Stallone both think of the movie. But is that true? Or have a handful of lasting aesthetics and some silly one-liners merely kept the film in fans’ good graces? Zingers like “You’re a disease, and I’m the cure,” or “This is where the law stops and I start” are fun in their ludicrousness, though they’re also practically plagiarized from “Dirty Harry.” Is that enough to save this slasher-actioner whose plot I can still barely recite to you after multiple rewatches?

Arguably, the camp factor of “Cobra” is what’s kept it somewhat in the culture decades later. In 2019, it was announced that Robert Rodriguez was working on a “Coba” TV show reboot, though that project seems to have gone quiet. Rodriguez’s self-aware style and affection for grindhouse, B-movie stylings seem like a good fit for “Cobra,” as irony has always been a big part of why people like the original movie so much.

What’s harder to contend with today is the film’s ’80s brand of police brutality heroism. Like many of its contemporaries in the cop genre, “Cobra” features a sadistic, cultish type of gangster villain who’s so purely evil that they lose any semblance to real-world criminals. This monstrous figure, who’s ill-defined within the movie itself, is used as justification for Cobra to dish out his own brand of unfettered violence in response, firing off quips in the process. That’s to say, if there’s a resounding problem with “Cobra,” then it’s a problem with the genre at lare. And yet, the sheer absurdity of the movie might be why it’s endured when other previous, more grounded attempts at making the same kind of film have faded.