Cobra (1986) Revisited: Sylvester Stallone Movie Review

After Rocky and Rambo reached their peak in 1985 with Rocky IV and Rambo II; Stallone gave us yet another badass character to root in 1986, one with sequel potential galore no less and that man was called COBRA! 

Cobra’s roots are interesting. The movie was BEYOND LOOSELY based on Paula Gosling’s novel “Fair Game”. Funnily enough another cinematic adaptation of the same novel was pumped out in 1995 starring William Baldwin and Cindy Crawford. That time it was called Fair Game, after the book and yes – IT SUCKED fair ass.

The bulk of Cobra’s meat came from Stallone’s work on Beverly Hills Cop. Stallone was initially slated to be the lead of that film; but once he read the script; he took it upon himself to change the main character’s name from Foley to Cobretti, he axed out the comedy while the visceral action set-pieces were double downed. The latter would have jacked up the budget, so Sly and Paramount, who didn’t care for what Sly was doing with the project, parted ways. Eddie Murphy took on the Foley role and the rest was cinematic history.

But Sly’s ideas did not go to waste. He wound up repurposing his Beverly Hills Cop material into a new script. Named after John Wayne (whose birth name was Marion Robert Morrison); Marion Cobretti aka COBRA was born! The film was shot on a budget of $25 million courtesy of a Cannon Films and Warner Brothers team up. Yeah, Cannon didn’t have the coin to pay Sly… so… that’s how it went.

We dig into the history behind the film on the latest episode of Sylvester Stallone Revisited. Check out previous episodes below.