Originally, he was to star in “Beverly Hills Cop” but he wanted to make a more violent picture so thus Sylvester Stallone (“Cliffhanger”, “Rocky”) made “Cobra”, which is essentially just a remake of “Dirty Harry” starring Clint Eastwood.

In “Cobra”, Stallone stars as tough cop with the title for his nickname, who is assigned to protect a model named Ingrid (Brigitte Nielsen “Red Sonja”) as she is the only surviving witness to a crime committed by a murderous cult. As you watch you’ll notice every cop movie cliché known to man but here it is executed in a fun, cheesy and likeable way.

Sylvester Stallone is hardly a great actor but he can be good when placed in the right role, here there is less humanity than his Rocky Balboa and John Rambo characters but he works alright. Like Harry Callahan he’s an unrealistic character in a realistic world. Some of the lines he says here are dynamite; my favourite is his comeback when a deranged man threatens to blow up a shop. Brigitte Nielsen is good but nothing special as the damsel in distress. The bad guys aren’t too memorable however and this is an area where the film isn’t too good.

“Cobra” begins with Stallone telling us some shocking American crime statistics, what’s kind of sad is that I somehow feel there are people in some more unfortunate other countries who will laugh at these figures. The film is juvenile but the action sequences are good, the action star has charisma and the one-liners are amusing. I don’t know why this film gets such low scores on review sites but I actually think it is a lot better than many of Stallone’s pictures. The only missing from this in terms of comedic value is to have the poster of the film actually in one of the shots.