I don't think it's his best film, but its definitely underrated, and deserves more attention.

Does Cobra have a cult following? it's a lot of fun...

I do think The Specialist is his most underrated though... it's so stylish and 80s cool

Most definitely. It's also one of his most quotable..."Go ahead, I don't shop here" is an instant classic.

I'll also add Nighthawks and Demolition Man to the underrated list.

Lots of hilarious quotes in this film. In the final battle between Cobra and the cultist, where the cultist keeps calling him a "pig." It's funny how the cultist spits, literally, as he says "Pig!"

SPOILER

It was also satisfying when Cobra hangs the cultist on the huge metal hook, which carries the cultist into the fire. For that moment, the cultist was like a pig... on a spit.

I love this movie. Love it when he drives his car off the second level of the parking garage into the street and keeps going. At the end of the movie "I'd like to get my car fixed. Sorry, not in the budget."

defintely cobra is one of my favs from sly. However it is cheesy af. Demolition man imo was his best underrated film with snipes and bullock

@gspgreases said:

defintely cobra is one of my favs from sly. However it is cheesy af. Demolition man imo was his best underrated film with snipes and bullock

It's the cheese that makes it so great ;)

I've (finally) watched Cobra. I suppose, had I taken it all in when I was a teenager, I'd have nostalgic memories like I do for Police Academy, Beverly Hills Cop, and others of the period.

But, I found these murderers utterly unbelievable; the strategy of the so-called specialist to be woeful; the cliche of the tough cop with a heart of gold fighting the bureaucracy of superiors who "just don't understand" to be tired; the political rhetoric against constitutional rights and due process contrived. And the action? Meh.

To all the fans who love this movie, please continue to do so. These are just my singular opinions; this movie did not do it for me. As for Stallone himself, his performance was both fun yet also annoying. Yes, he had some slick lines and, as tough-guy as he is, his delivery of more sensitive/humorous dialog is splendid. He is especially good at the "lone wolf" type, and wrings as much out of that persona as this script affords. Stallone is always fun to watch, even if it takes a special vehicle to make the most of his brand of acting.

Demolition man imo was his best underrated film with snipes and bullock

I agree, I still don’t know what the 3 sea shells are for.

Is this the most criminally underrated Stallone film?

I don’t know if it’s underrated when it did $160 million at the box office. That’s good for 1986. It got bad reviews but I remember liking it.

30 YEARS LATER:COBRA

@JAYJAY1234 said:

I don’t know if it’s underrated when it did $160 million at the box office. That’s good for 1986. It got bad reviews but I remember liking it.

"Underrated" is likely not speaking to its box office performance, but to how often (or, not often as the case may be) the movie title is mentioned when people talk about Stallone, his movies, or other action movies of the era (The Terminator! Top Gun! Aliens! Predator!). Cobra was late to the Dirty Harry/Death Wish brooding cop/vigilante cleaning up scum off the streets genre. Action, high tech and sci-fi had begun to merge - it was new, glossy, techy (and, as such, began speaking to an emerging generation), leaving Cobra looking tired, dirty, so...70s.

And, even just limited to the context of Stallone movies, given the truly iconic characters/franchises Stallone has created (Rocky, Rambo), it's understandable if Cobretti gets lost. Add the aforementioned evolution of movie genre classifications, and it's even more understandable.

All that being said, doing $160 million really good business for this film!

• Stallone wanted to blow the budget for Beverly Hills Cop far beyond what the producers were willing to pony up. We know that he took his ideas and Cobra was the eventual result. Chances are, while there are no official numbers on the budget for Cobra, it's unlikely that he scaled back. It'd seem to me that he'd be thinking "I'm Rocky, I'm Rambo, I know how to make money in action movies. And now that I've got more sway in how this is going down, I'm doing it my way."

• budget estimates I've found put it at around $25 million. That seems a smidgen high to me. In my personal movie box office ROI database, I've got 14 movies released in 1984. The average budget for those 14 movies was $15 million. Filtered for "action", there's Aliens, Raw Deal, Top Gun, and Cobra. The average of the first three mentioned was $14 million, including Top Gun and Aliens, made for $15 million and $18.5 million respectively. With those numbers and the kind of movies they were, I'm suspicious about estimates of $25 million for Cobra and, the closer Cobra's budget might regress to the mean, the more it shines, ROI-wise.

• so let's talk ROI. Raw Deal was relatively cheap to make, at $8 million and, while a low budget is usually a staple of big money makers, it still did poorly, only returning a paltry $1.91. The average return for all 14 movies I have released in 1986 was $9.81, and Cobra returned $8 if the budget was $20 million, better than Aliens return of $7.08 on an $18.5 million dollar budget. $20 million, given Stallone's star power (or, his perception thereof), seems to make sense. Having said that, Top Gun returned a whopping $23.79 on a budget of $15 million.

• Nevertheless, Cobra did indeed do well in a year with some big hits. Crocodile Dundee returned $65.64; Ferris Bueller's Day off returned $11.69; Platoon returned $23.09, Stand By Me returned $6.54...within a year, there's only so much money the public has available to go to the movies, yet Cobra managed to return good money in a year of some very memorable movies.

@DRDMovieMusings

"Underrated" is likely not speaking to its box office performance, but to how often (or, not often as the case may be) the movie title is mentioned when people talk about Stallone, his movies, or other action movies of the era (The Terminator! Top Gun! Aliens! Predator!).

It’s too intangible to measure underrated by means of who is talking about it compared to other movies. Three of the four movies you mentioned in comparison have franchises attached to them, and new movies are recently being made, that may keep them more relevant in conversation. Also, Top Gun isn’t really of the same genre to me. If we are comparing apples to apples, maybe Raw Deal, Commando, Above the Law and Blood Sport may be more in line as a comparison. Again, there really isn’t anyway to gauge how much something is talked about and if we are comparing like movies. I don’t think the movie is underrated. Friends in my circle, who probably haven’t seen the movie in 25 years like me, remember it and talk about it when we’re reminiscing about 80’s movies.

I do want you to know I liked your entire post and agree:_ “Cobra was late to the Dirty Harry/Death Wish brooding cop/vigilante cleaning up scum off the streets genre. Action, high tech and sci-fi had begun to merge - it was new, glossy, techy (and, as such, began speaking to an emerging generation), leaving Cobra looking tired, dirty, so...70s.”_

@JAYJAY1234 said:

It’s too intangible to measure underrated by means of who is talking about it compared to other movies.

Agree, it is indeed subjective. But this thread is here because there is a perception, by some, that it is underrated, whatever that means to them. Through discussion we might find that such is really not the case, or come to appreciate what about it does seem underrated.

Again, there really isn’t anyway to gauge how much something is talked about

Too bad we didn't have social media back in the day! How many reviews or tweets or quick surveys might have better told the tale of the tape at street level, in school yards and video arcades, about what people were talking about when these movies came out.

But, we do have a subjective sense when a movie makes a big splash in the public conversation. Take 1987 - movies like Fatal Attraction, Full Metal Jacket, Predator, Robocop, and Wall Street, were recognized as seminal in their respective genres, and much more highly discussed, debated, analysed than other 1987 offerings such as Death Wish 4: The Crackdown, From the Hip, or even movies that did very well at box office even if they weren't in any way important, movies like Beverly Hills Cop 2 (also featuring Brigitte Nielsen!), or Lethal Weapon.

When I compared Cobra with movies outside the genre, I concede they were outside the genre, I was only speaking about how people at the water cooler and the school yard were likely to be talking about them.

I don’t think the movie is underrated. Friends in my circle, who probably haven’t seen the movie in 25 years like me, remember it and talk about it when we’re reminiscing about 80’s movies.

I have a list here on TMDb that speak to this - Bad Movies I Like. There are several movies on that list that are favourites of mine or among "people in my circle"...but we know very well they are generally not popular, or very good for that matter. Trying to take the pulse of wider society, beyond my circle, is likely where the original poster of this thread was coming from.

I do want you to know I liked your entire post and agree:_ “Cobra was late to the Dirty Harry/Death Wish brooding cop/vigilante cleaning up scum off the streets genre. Action, high tech and sci-fi had begun to merge - it was new, glossy, techy (and, as such, began speaking to an emerging generation), leaving Cobra looking tired, dirty, so...70s.”_

:-) likewise, good conversation!