Commando / 1985
90 minutes
dir: Mark L. Lester
screenplay: Stephen E. de Souza, Jeph Loeb
starring: Arnold Schwarzeneggar, Rae Dawn Chong, Alyssa Milano, Dan Hedaya, Vernon Wells

Is Commando too easy a choice? Probably. Yes. Absolutely. This and Quiet Cool were sort of what this site was made for. Unfortunately, there comes a point where there’s not much more you can say about insane freakshow action movies; there are clichés and motifs that I’ll always be amused by, but sometimes just aren’t really worth thinking about.

Fortunately, that point definitely cannot be reached without first talking about Commando, one of the most blowingupingest films I’ve ever seen. The unreasonable death toll it racks up over its hour-and-a-half running time is distinctly aided by the fact that someone is killed by knife, gun, explosion, or the mere force of Arnold Schwarzeneggar’s rippling brow in nearly every scene. And perhaps even more unreasonable is this shot of Arnold feeding a baby deer with a pre-teen Alyssa Milano from the opening credits.

Most unreasonable.

Preceding the credits, though, is a sequence in which three guys bite it by the hand of Cooke (played by Bill Duke, a recognizable character actor, Arnold’s co-star in Predator and director of Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit), but the first two murders don’t matter at all and we soon learn that the third was a sham. That the leathery, mustachioéd, and erotically chainmailéd Bennett is not only still alive but involved in the kidnapping of Alyssa Milano in order to coerce Arnold’s character John Matrix to do EVIL DEEDS provides no particular shock to the viewer. What does it matter that Bennett is still alive? Why does he look like a living cartoon? Is he really supposed to be the villain? That’s insane!

It’s pretty much impossible to distinguish what’s going on in the beginning of Commando, even as the first ten minutes are explained away with about thirty seconds of dialogue: three of men from retired Colonel Matrix’s unit have been killed, and John may be next! But it’s also pretty much impossible to care. The first deaths are meant to provide credibility to the idea that Matrix is in danger, but obviously he isn’t. So you gloss over that shit, and continue to marvel at the shameless violence. Little Jenny’s been abducted by terrorist mercenaries working for a Latin American warlord? Whatever man, I’m not worried, Arnold just broke that weird-looking bad guy’s neck on an airplane, jumped out of the moving plane’s wheel well into a swamp, then set his watch so he knows just how much time he has to kick ass.

Yep, everything's gonna be fine.

In his quest to discover where Jenny has been taken, he kidnaps Rae Dawn Chong, beats up a bunch of cops, throws squirrely henchman Sully off a cliff, impales Cooke – in a scene that includes boobs for some reason – and breaks into an army surplus store and steals a frightening amount of heavy weaponry and ammunition. Then he jacks a sea plane that Rae Dawn Chong can fly for some reason, and she takes them to Dan Hedaya’s Island Stronghold, everyone’s favorite family-friendly terrorist encampment theme park. Hedaya’s dictator character had expected Matrix to be in Val Verde – a vaguely Latin American country that links Commando with Die Hard 2 and Predator; all the movies were produced by Joel Silver, and Die Hard and its first sequel were also written by Stephen E. de Souza – where he was supposed to assassinate its U.S.-installed democratic leader in return for Jenny’s freedom, so obviously he’s totally pissed when Matrix shows up and annihilates his scenic resort getaway in an incredible ten-minute sequence that results in the demise of about 150 nameless drones.

You should know that this last bit, the part in which waves and waves of ethnic-looking evildoers are wasted at the hands of John Matrix, one-man army, is the best scene in the movie, the one you’re most likely to remember afterwards because it’s so beautifully senseless and excessive, a classic display of Arnold-in-action. The second best is Matrix’s sexy final showdown with a visibly aroused Bennett, which includes some great knife-fighting/wrestling/foreplay and a rather spectacular death-by-pipe-through-the-chest.

"Let off some steam, Bennett." That's what Arnold says here. That's a line in the movie.

You should also know that those political aspects of the plot are an absolute failure. Again, it’s supposed to help us believe what an honorable soldier and upstanding human being Matrix is, but that was a forgone conclusion as soon as you saw Arnold’s face on the poster. Besides, there’s no way that the shooting script of Commando was more than thirty pages, unless every gun sound, explosion, and groaning death had its own line on the page:

MATRIX
TCHTCHTCHTCHTCHCLICKPHEWWWWWWWWWWWARRRGGGGHGHGHGHG

HENCHMAN
AHHHHHHHHEEEIIWWWWWWWWWUHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHG

It’s the thinnest strand of plot that connects those big-action setpieces. This is a movie I’ve seen at least twenty times, and I still had to look up why Matrix was involved with all these bad dudes in the first place. While Commando is the action movie, the one people are talking about, whether they know it or not, when they complain that action movies are mindless and too violent, it lacks the hook that pushed the other best 1980s-era examples of the genre to franchise territory. I’m thinking Lethal Weapon, First Blood, The Terminator, Die Hard, RoboCop, Predator – movies that weren’t just big, but big three or four times over through two more decades.

You don’t need to see what happens with Murtaugh and Riggs after they sit down for Christmas dinner, but you kinda want to. John Matrix, however, is a blank slate, and Commando just sort of happens, and it happens fast, which is a good thing. If it lasted even four or five minutes more, it’d be too long – and that’s said with the knowledge that that extra time would likely just allow Matrix to add to the death toll and maybe cause a cool explosion. Really, there’s an entire look-how-stealthy-Arnold-can-be scene that could be cut out; it’d shave off four minutes, and no one dies in it, anyway.

Rae Dawn Chong was also skeptical about keeping the scene in which no one dies.

A sequel to Commando was written by de Souza (and, supposedly, Frank Darabont), but was turned down by Schwarzeneggar. Commando 2 eventually became Die Hard, and lo, all was right with the world. Where Colonel John Matrix and Adorable Daughter Jenny and Rae Dawn Chong go after they fly away from the homicidal slaughter (not to mention mindfuck of a diplomatic catastrophe) wrought by the vengeful soldier should be of no concern. And with his horrifically grand and devastating mission accomplished, it’s actually pretty easy to say goodbye.

Cool Dog / 2010
88 minutes
dir: Danny Lerner
screenplay: Danny Lerner, Les Weldon
starring: Michael Paré, Jackson Pace, Christa Campbell

Cool Dog is a children’s movie, but not the good kind, like you want, with clever bits that will make parents nod approvingly while the kids giggle. It’s the sort of children’s movie that ruins the day of any adults in earshot and assumes that their children are heinously, criminally stupid. It’s like the proverbial car wreck you can’t look away from, but if that car wreck was really irritating and you didn’t mind looking away to nap for a bit, which I can only imagine is a necessary step for viewing Cool Dog to completion.

The titular “cool dog” is named Rainy, and you learn quickly just how cool he is as he delivers some mail, rings the old town bell to tell people who are already awake that they’re probably late for something important, is fawned over by black people, and winks at the camera two times in the first three minutes. He also saves a little girl’s life, but it doesn’t really matter. Cool Dog is essentially just a series of events held together by the premise that Rainy is the greatest dog EVER, and that his human overlords are fucking morons. The thin plot runs like so: little Jimmy’s dad gets a vague promotion from the insurance company he works for, the family has to move from silly little Eagle Rock, Louisiana to FUCKIN’ NEW YORK CITY!, but they can’t take Rainy because “the apartment the company’s paying for doesn’t allow pets,” so they leave Rainy at “the fairgrounds,” then Rainy escapes and finds the family in New York, where there is trouble because of the whole thing from before about pets, but then Rainy uncovers an illegal exotic animal smuggling ring run by the building’s landlords.

Cool dog will now say grace.

Now if you were to say that, except maybe for the animal smugglers, this doesn’t all sound so bad, just pretty standard and dull, you obviously have not yet watched Cool Dog. To see Cool Dog is the only way to truly understand Cool Dog. If you’re only reading this, you are missing an incredible opportunity to be baffled by its script, confounded by any number of the odd choices made by its stars, and pushed to the brink of self-immolation by the editing and direction.

Think about the things you really value in the movies you love, both good and bad. A great movie will show you layered characters inhabiting a fully-realized world and engaged in a story that resonates with you on multiple levels. It would be insane to say that Cool Dog ever aspired to be anything like “a great movie,” and if director and co-writer Danny Lerner – the man behind the lens of three movies about shark attacks, two movies about dogs, and a 2009 Dolph Lundgren vehicle, natch – told me himself that it did, I would laugh in his face. But it lacks even the fun elements that make the I-can’t-believe-this-movie-even-exists type movie so great. In fact, it even takes one of my favorite bad-movie tropes, the stilted and nonsensical acting of already crummy dialogue, and makes it flat-out annoying. It’s just one sad looking but brilliant German shepherd navigating a world run by absolute fools, black-toothed animal rapists, and really insensitive parents.

I mean it literally when I say he navigates it. After escaping from the aforementioned animal raping caretaker of “the fairgrounds” – whoever gave that actor the instruction to play up how much he loves to have sex with barnyard animals and seem especially wary of Jimmy’s merely platonic love for his dog really nailed it – Rainy finds his way to the safety of a moving train, whereupon he enters the 1930s and encounters some lovely boxcar hobos.

Cool dog is not impressed.

The movie takes a turn now when something incredible happens: Rainy helps one of the bums with a game of checkers by grasping one of the pieces in his paw and winning it. Then he drives the train. And he boards a freighter coming up the East River. And he drives that, too. And now he’s roaming New York City. And now’s on the subway. And now he’s in Harlem’s 125th Street station, foiling a mugging. And then he takes down a trio of nogoodniks messing with a homeless man’s cart late at night in a park. And then I guess he sleeps, but then he takes off in the morning, once again making a significant impact on a person’s life only to run away in search of another heroic thrill.

I won’t even bother running down the rest of the list of fucking crazy things the dog does. Actually one more: Rainy steals and drives a car in a brief scene that serves no purpose and results in nothing, save for a shot of the dog suddenly wearing sunglasses. So anyway, Rainy and Jimmy are obviously reunited, but here a problem arises: there are still forty minutes left in the movie. So a brand new plot comes up, that animal smuggling business from earlier. Turns out the landlords of this building, a comically mismatched skinny dork and his gruesome fat wife, are storing exotic creatures (mostly parrots and kangaroos, of course) in the building’s basement. There’s a piano down there, too, and in celebration of the kangaroo’s newfound freedom by Rainy’s paws, Rainy plays a little waltz.

Cool dog is not taking requests.

A good question to ask at this point, without pausing the movie, mind you, because it doesn’t matter, is, “Why would Jimmy’s dad’s insurance firm move this family into a building that looks very classy on the outside but is apparently a hellhole owned by these two monstrous criminals?” And of course the answer, as cackled by the intrepid Danny Lerner as he bathes in his (rented) swimming pool full of nickels, is, “Kids are so stupid, they don’t care! They’ll never notice!”

Now, I know not every movie for children can have be Pixar-level metaphorical or have Disney-quality artistry or feature adults as driven and coherent as Gordon Bombay in The Mighty Ducks and star kids as authentic and I-want-to-be-friends-with-those-guys fun as The Sandlot, but Cool Dog is just such a fucking mess. If I was a parent and my child made me watch Cool Dog, I would be intensely displeased with that kid for days to come. And worse yet, if my child honestly enjoyed Cool Dog, I would be overcome with shame, and forced to reevaluate my approach to parenting. Off in the distance, I can hear Lerner shout, “What do you care? It’s not even for you!” That’s fair, and true. And sure, some kids are so stupid, but I think it’s dangerous to cater to the assumption that children have a six-second attention span by making a disingenuous trash heap like Cool Dog, a film in which the dog is the only decent actor, and honestly, even he’s not so great. Is this movie the exception or the rule? There has to be something in between your big-time blockbuster family movies, but does it have to be this?

Cool dog makes good sandwich.

In the end, the landlords, who tried to kidnap Jimmy and ship him to Mexico by freighter after he stumbled upon their secret parrot-ridden basement, are arrested. But wait! Rainy died! An incredible twist! So many weak fake tears. (No fewer than six adult men try their hand at poor stage-crying in Cool Dog.) A hero’s death, for sure, fully validating his – oh, nevermind, he’s alive, and everyone’s happy now. Rainy gets the key to the city, and the last line of the movie comes from Jimmy’s step-mom (played by a woman who has no comprehension of how to mimic a Southern accent and looks like Yasmin Bleeth stuffed her face full of rigid plastic shards): “That’s my dog. Rainy.” Finally, the cold and mostly unnecessary stepmother character warms her heart just enough to assert ownership over an animal that she’d been indifferent towards for the majority of the movie. Man, this thing sure is a waste of – holy shit Cool Dog has its own theme song!?

In the way that Quiet Cool and Cobra are representative of everything that is great about cheesy, insane action movies, 1993’s Striking Distance is a symbol of everything not great. First off, it’s too long at OVER 100 MINUTES. It’s boring, and it’s really, really dumb in a totally boring way. There are a few good chases, but most of them happen on boats, so they’re not even that good, because boats obviously suck.

I watched this movie maybe nine months ago, but I’m not sure if it’s become hazier in my memory since then, or if I’ve just come to really understand everything I didn’t like about it. Either way, here’s how it all gets started: Bruce Willis plays Pittsburgh detective Tom Hardy and it’s just about time for the policeman’s ball when suddenly there’s a serial strangler on the loose, so that shit gets postponed so every officer in the city can chase the guy around for a few hours, but then he kills Bruce Willis’ dad and gets away, but then a guy is arrested who definitely doesn’t look like a serial strangler and (duh) Bruce Willis doesn’t believe they caught the real serial strangler, but Bruce Willis hardly has any time to even think about that because his mildly retarded police officer cousin Jimmy is about to jump off a bridge because he doesn’t want to go to prison for being a bad cop that beat the shit out of a suspect. Relevant to this scene and the character: Tom Hardy testified against Cousin Jimmy in court, because he’s serious about being a cop, and no mortal man is above that, goddammit.

So then Cousin Jimmy jumps and the skies TEAR OPEN to let down some totally dramatic and real-looking rain, and the whole situation really gets to Bruce Willis and makes him cry pretty hard.

Fast forward two years into the future and Bruce Willis has been demoted to the ever-so-lowly rank of BOAT COP because he went on the news after Cousin Jimmy’s death to say he thought the real strangler was a cop, which is definitely frowned upon in the cop community, even though they’re otherwise pretty forgiving and open-minded. Anyway, turns out Bruce Willis is actually a pretty shitty BOAT COP with a mess of self-esteem, authority, and hygiene issues.

An hour and a half later, it turns out Cousin Jimmy didn’t die, and he was the real strangler, and Bruce Willis tasers him in the mouth. Whatever.

Sorry nerds, BOAT COPS on patrol.

The number-one thing you need to remember while watching Striking Distance is that all cops are related and they’re also all idiots that ignore crucial aspects of the job like “evidence” and “investigation” and “morality.” You’ll be reminded, consistently, of how much Dennis Farina rules, confused just as consistently about how Tom Sizemore could have ever been popular, and astounded by the talents of Sarah Jessica Parker. Parker plays Bruce’s by-the-book, no-nonsense, BOAT COP partner Jo Christman – and also she’s a woman! It’s a pretty wild twist, so take a moment to wrap your head around that one. (Actually, she turns out to be a state trooper assigned to follow him for some reason. But the woman thing is way more surprising.)

Of course, over time and using absolutely concrete “proof” that he’s “acquired,” Bruce Willis convinces Sarah Jessica Parker that he’s right about that whole thing that happened way back whenever. And when more stranglings happen following the old killer’s M.O., well what else could you need to know?

Obviously none of that matters. I feel like I’m just filling space here, which I guess is in line with the movie itself. Nothing that happens during Striking Distance ever feels necessary to the plot or to the viewer. All the reasons we watch movies, for entertainment, for art, to be challenged, to be wowed, to just relax and enjoy something new – Striking Distance has none of that. Instead there’s a scene where Tom and Jo sidle up next to a suspicious barge (duh) and decide to check it out and I’m pretty sure Bruce Willis bonks some dude in the head. An ex-girlfriend of Tom’s is murdered, which is confusing, because who is this guy and since when are his ex-girlfriends of any relevance? Oh, and there’s another policeman’s ball – this one goes off without a hitch, THANK GOD – but everybody’s still mad for what Bruce Willis did all those two years ago and he’s like, “Come on, you guys, come on, get over it already.”

He said, smoldering.

In case you were wondering, Bruce Willis does sleep with Sarah Jessica Parker, but she initiates it, because she’s totally drawn to vulnerable sad-sack alcoholics – Oh, I didn’t mention disgraced BOAT COP Tom Hardy’s back-and-forth struggle with the sauce? Must’ve slipped my mind, which is odd since it’s such an important part of the story. – and he resists at first (Almost certainly an actual quote: “If we bang, it’ll definitely blow your mind, because I let out all my issues when I bang so it gets pretty real, and I’m sorry, I just don’t think you’re ready for that sort of bang, babe.”) but then he gives in because Jo is just such a warm, charming, and believable character. What follows is a really uncomfortable bullshit sex scene featuring an A-list action star and a former child actor, which must have sounded like pure gold on the page, shoehorned into the movie in a desperate attempt to bring some romance or steaminess or allure to a pile of hot garbage that had no pulse to begin with.

Oh yeah and their vigorous and passionate bone-session is being watched by Cousin Jimmy.

Yeah, that's so sexy, just like that, yeah, that's hot, yeah, I

Bruce Willis broke into Hollywood in 1988 as with Die Hard – which I love, natch – but he didn’t really do anything else that was well-received critically until Pulp Fiction in 1994. In that time he did about a dozen other movies, including the first Die Hard sequel, two Look Who’s Talking movies, a horrible adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities, Hudson Hawk, North, The Last Boy Scout (which rules in theory but doesn’t come through), and Color of Night, an erotic thriller pretty much only remembered for its sex and nudity.

I guess what I’m trying to say is: Bruce Willis actually sucks, but he usually gets a pass because he’s done about ten or twelve especially great movies in the last twenty-five years. That not a very promising ratio, but enjoyable favorites like Pulp Fiction and Sin City and The Fifth Element ultimately tend to cancel out timewasters like Hudson Hawk and Bandits and The Jackal. Is Bruce Willis a cool enough guy or a charismatic enough actor to save a D.O.A. piece of shit that tries to be way more than it is, such as Striking Distance? No, he’s not. Wasn’t it fucking awesome when he murdered those asshole Germans in Die Hard? Yes, yes, a million times yes.

Just end it already.

This movie drove me insane. When I think about it now, weeks since seeing it, I still don’t feel quite right. There is alternately so much and so little going on any given moment that trying to wrap your head around the things you’ve seen is damn near impossible. Command Performance is an empty, horrid void, a disaster, a hopeless, lifeless shell of a thing, and so much of it left me so stunned and confused that I may have stopped breathing for a while.

I’m sure a good chunk of why all of that is can be attributed to the mighty Dolph Lundgren. [I should expect that I’ll be talking about quite a few of his greatest works on here, and I feel that starting now, in the present, and working backwards – back to his glory days – is definitely the way to go.] As you, observant reader, may have already noticed, Sir Dolph not only stars in this direct-to-video picture, but he was also the director, as well as co-writer, along with the brilliant Steve Latshaw, director of the smash hit Vampire Trailer Park (1991) and writer of U.S. SEALS 3 – Frogmen: Operation Stormbringer (2000).

So much about Command Performance is so wrong that pondering how it came to be would surely only drive one deeper into the throes of madness. I neither know nor care where Dolph’s ideas for the movie originated. I watched the majority of it completely slackjawed. Somewhere between the headache-inducing sequences of the first twenty minutes to the mind-melting inanity of the conclusion, I lost faith in humanity. But perhaps that was to be expected as I sat down to watch the most recent of Dolph Lundgren’s direct-to-video feature-length action movies. I guess I just didn’t know it would be as confusing and bizarre as it turned out to be.

So here’s how this whole mess goes down. The film opens in 1991, in some fancy Russian chamber. The dissolving of the Soviet Union has just been made official. Someone murders someone else and then commits suicide. Jump to present day! Dolph Lundgren is riding a motorcycle. A kick-ass rock band is rehearsing in an empty arena. Dolph Lundgren is shirtless and playing drums, and it looks weird. Wait. What about that murder-suicide? What the fuck just happened? Don’t worry about it. Really, just put it out of your mind. Instead, observe this aged action legend lay a real pounding on the skins.

Turns out, as we learn from a Russian news crew that is reporting on the event in English for Russian television – just your average alternative for an introduction or any semblance of plot advancement – Dolph’s character’s heavy rock ‘n’ roll band, C.M.F. (CHEAP MOTHER FUCKER), is opening for American pop star Venus in a “command performance” for the Russian president and his two daughters. Beyond the reporter’s voiceover, no information is exchanged for about twenty minutes. Rather, we’re smashed over the head by a drawn-out series of unimportant events.

Venus hits on Dolph’s character, who introduces himself simply as “Joe,” just your average Californian rock drummer playing in a Russian band that sounds like Staind, or Nickelback, or some comparably dumb rock group. We learn that the president’s kids are excited about seeing Venus. Joe tries to smoke a joint directly next to the reporter in the lobby of the arena, but ends up getting interviewed. The members of all the groups meet the president. A rock band and another pop singer that play before Joe’s band surely exist only to allow for extra shots of some shady terrorist business going on beneath the arena. C.M.F. performs, and it doesn’t really matter, because we already saw it. Close-up shot on a guy wearing a C.M.F. shirt. Venus takes the stage. The bad guys gradually make their way inside and set up while she performs the same song with very few dance moves.

Finally, about 22% of the way through the movie, the bad guys storm the stage and mow down the crowd before taking the president, his daughters, the American ambassador to Russia, Venus, and the news crew hostage. Good thing our man Joe was in the bathroom, still trying to smoke that joint, while this all happened, leaving him with the task of saving the day. But how, you ask? How will he achieve this! Oh, he’s a tough ex-biker with some vague knowledge of military tactics? And he’ll be assisted by a keen rookie Russian Secret Service-type agent? Good, that was easy.

The rest of the movie rolls along pretty much like this: the Russians all speak English and the whole ordeal is revealed to be some kind of complicated revenge/extortion plot; Joe crawls through the pit of slaughtered fans, has some bullshit traumatic acid flashback, and slams some people over the head with a guitar; Joe and the agent find the kid in the C.M.F. shirt, save his life, and leave him, injured, with a gun to protect himself while they go kick some ass, but never go back for him; they find a small armory in the “security office”; the terrorists force the 18-years-sober American ambassador to drink vodka before killing him; Venus sneaks away and finds Joe and BLAH BLAH BLAH everything turns out okay and Joe gets a watch from the president with the phrase “Rock and Load!” inscribed on the back…

Oh, and somewhere in there, Joe tells Venus, “Dying is easy…rock ‘n’ roll is hard.”

BRILLIANT

Honesetly, it’s all kind of a blur, both in my mind and on the screen: Command Performance, like so many other modern action movies, is heavily afflicted by horribly choppy editing of already nauseating handheld camerawork, a technique that became standard during the 2000s. I don’t want to put all the blame on The Bourne Identity…but that movie fucked up the way action movies are made. Filming on handhelds and throwing in a million quick edits works in The Bourne Identity because the filmmakers were working with a very compelling story, backed by very skilled actors. Command Performance has none of those things, and its blind stabs at imitating the style are more insufferable than anything that actually happens in this movie. I feel like that may be the case with a lot of movies that take this frantic approach, especially more recent ones that capitalize on fear of terrorism.

Of course, I’m not really a stickler for “compelling,” but one of my qualifications is “thoroughly entertaining.” Command Performance does have some excellent sections, but overall it’s just too dull and too monotonous for way too long. Action happens in gruesome bursts, and then it’s right back to the chore of developing the powerfully dumb plot, the tedium of scenes of dialogue between characters that serve no discernable purpose. It just gets to be too much. Listen, Dolph, you’re my man and all, but…this movie made me want to jump out a window high above the ground in hopes that I might find something below that made more sense.

Cobra begins with Sylvester Stallone, as no-holds-barred bad motherfucker renegade Los Angeles cop Marion “Cobra” Cobretti, telling the audience how dire crime in America has become. Burglaries every eleven seconds. “250 rapes a day,” he says. Chilling claims, especially in the first minute of a movie. But the oddly serious tone of the opening sequence is quickly abandoned, making way for some of the most excellent, silliest one-liners in Stallone history.

“Go ahead, I don’t shop here,” to a man threatening to blow up the grocery store he’s taken hostage.

The classic, “You’re the disease…and I’m the cure,” just before throwing a knife and pumping six bullets in to the chest of the grocery terrorist, propelling him on to the meat counter.

“This is where the law stops and I start…sucker,” to the leader of a supremacist murder cult just before their final showdown.

To a smoking “Latino” punk who touched his car: “That’s bad for your health, y’know.”
Punk: “What is, pinche?”
Cobra: “Me.” Cobra grabs the cigarette from his mouth, rips his shirt, and tells him to clean up his act.

Sure, why not!

Bad for your health.

Some of the greatest pleasures of this movie come from imagining Sly sitting at his typewriter, picking the perfect spots in the story to place such witticisms. I was quickly reminded as I made that joke (several times) that he also wrote Rocky. The difference here, though, is that between Rocky and Cobra, Stallone turned into a bankable megastar. In the lead-up to getting Rocky made, the man really didn’t have much else going for him – there are a handful of reasons why that is a classic film, and one is that Stallone was putting his heart and soul into it. Cobra is a ton of shit blowing up and people being murdered/committing murder at completely frantic pace.

But therein lies one of the charms of the film: its unabashed disregard for rules and guidelines of all sorts, both in the world of the film, and in the practice of filmmaking. Cobra performs his duties as a police officer in a completely irresponsible manner – but goddamn if he doesn’t get the job done, and with gusto. And the writing and direction of Cobra is marred with holes and nonsensical turns. For example, the existence aforementioned supremacist murder cult – from which the primary villain of the film, the Night Slasher, emerges – is never completely explained; the audience is meant to assume that bad people have fallen into some sort of cult and are now doing bad things. And we do, because there’s really no sense in questioning it.

Similarly, why Cobra acts the way he does never becomes the issue that one might expect it to; his superiors don’t always agree with the way he tends to kill suspects, but they know he’s a mighty good cop. And you just can’t fuck with steady productivity. On top of that, there are a handful of traits that, one would imagine, were meant to bolster the character’s defiant image that are left alone entirely – chewing a match stick; wearing large mirrored sunglasses; attempting to eat healthy, because too much junk food can make you “violent”; having an illustration of a cobra on the grip of the semi-automatic handgun that he just tucks into the front of his pants because, apparently, rebels just don’t believe in holsters. I’d say let’s see how rebellious he is after he accidentally blows his nuts off, but it was probably a moot point the second Stallone put the ink on the page. In Cobra, things just are, and must be accepted as such.

In this sense, it is totally unlike Quiet Cool, the subject of my last entry. The characters in that movie have almost no defining features. They just kind of float through the scenery as the forest explodes around them. In fact, the attempts to explain their backgrounds are ridiculous and confusing, as if the writers forgot that “character development” is a real thing while they were writing it and just popped it in there after the fact. The stars of Cobra, however, are practically overloaded with unique characteristics. It’s almost as if Stallone started with them and worked backwards…

Needless to say (and by now, it really ought to be clear) this movie rules. Some sick car chases, so many explosions, Stallone’s then-wife Brigitte Nielsen looking totally fine and being constantly in distress, a freakishly high number of rounds of ammunition fired in public places – that’s a recipe for fun if I ever read one. But then, just as a deliciously sweet little cherry top on, Cobra chooses to set the law aside at the end of the movie and straight-up murders the Night Slasher by popping him on an industrial hook in a steel mill and setting him on fire. And if you didn’t think that could get any cooler: that’s not even the first person he sets on fire in that scene.

While I briefly Internet-researched Cobra, I found that the concept for it originated from Stallone’s wish to turn the comedy Beverly Hills Cop, in which he was set to star, into a balls-out action movie. The idea was not met kindly by producers.

I’ve only seen a handful of films that really “changed” me, made me go back and reevaluate not only my perception of cinema as an artform, but also art in general. The spectacular 1986 action/thriller/vague family drama Quiet Cool is one of those films.

I caught it on television one night last April. It seemed to be well along already, but I was sucked in by the abundance of explosions, marijuana, James Remar (“Dexter,” The Warriors) kicking ass with a shit-eating grin, long and uncomfortable stares between James Remar and a grown man acting like a frightened child, color-coordinated villains, and gruesome vengeance murders that dominated the last thirty or forty minutes. I had been swept away to the tiny village of Babylon, nestled in the verdant forests of Northern California, a once-beautiful land marred by the invasion of shady dope growers and their fashion-forward enforcers.

L to R: White Haired Villain, Leather Daddy Villain, Red Haired Villain, Black Haired Villain

Thankfully, the movie restarted as soon as it ended, allowing me to take it in as a whole. It begins with a montage of photographs of marijuana plants scored by the gentle sound of a blaring saxophone, which reappears frequently throughout the first scene, in which we meet our protagonist, Joe Dylanne (Remar), as he wakes up in his gigantic New York City studio apartment, apparently rides his motorcycle from inside the apartment out on to the street, and then chases down a roller-skating purse-snatcher. Turns out, Joe Dylanne is an NYPD officer who plays by his own rules. Buckle the fuck up.

I was surprised to see that the movie opens in New York. The location, very often a defining feature of films that take place in its borders, proves to be entirely unimportant. There’s even a disregard for the city’s geography during the chase scene as the cop and robber descend into a 42nd Street subway station only to emerge at Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall, about three miles away. The city is only referenced in one other scene, in the context of a goofy “big town vs. little town” values discussion. (“It’s hard to believe you left New York for this!”) On the other hand, now you know what a tough big-city cop Joe is, which is truly an invaluable piece of information.

In a fantastically odd bit of editing, we’re brought to a Northern California forest. Here we meet Joshua, an outdoorsy guy who appears to be well into his twenties but acts like a prepubescent boy around his parents. That’s over quickly, however, after the parents are swiftly executed by the film’s villains after Joshua witnesses the bad guys murder a nameless young man who stumbles upon a rather easy-to-spot pot-growing operation in the woods. After Black Haired Villain (Nick Cassavetes, son of film legends John Cassavetes and Gina Rowlands) shoots Joshua’s parents, Red Haired Villain lassoes Joshua, drags him around on his motorcycle, and then throws him off a cliff.

Miraculously, he lives, and we flash back to New York, where Joe receives a worried phone call from Katy, an ex-flame who moved to California some time ago. She explains that she hasn’t heard from her brother, Joshua’s father, in days, and she’s afraid “something terrible has happened” to him. For some reason, only Joe can be trusted with this information and, in a stunningly unprofessional turn, he takes off for Babylon directly from the police station. Cut to a little Pan Am product placement, shots of Joe driving a Jeep, and some shaky encounters with the local folk. After we’re introduced to an old lady who may or may not be Katy’s mother, Katy explains to Joe that Babylon is “the dope capital of the Northwest,” and the intrigue only gears up from there.

What ensues over the next hour is a mindblowing accumulation of shallow and confusing writing; acting that is stiff, over-compensatory, and bizarre all at the same time; awesome action scenes, many of which include motorcycles, in spite of the lush and mountainous forest setting; people kind of talking about pot; a character named Toker who always “overdoes it” while smoking on the job, which results in the exploding of the tent he was in charge of; a scene in which four Molotov cocktails are thrown at a single cabin; and a blindingly sharp plot twist.

Just as crucial as all that, and one of the top-ranking reasons that I love this movie: Quiet Cool has its own theme song. “Quiet Cool,” the song, is a balls-out pop-rock jam by Joe Lamont that sort of references Quiet Cool, the film, but mostly is about doing what you “gotta do” and being a good guy. Lamont must have been soaring on the wings of his classic power ballad, “Victims of Love,” when he penned this lost gem.

Legendary

So yes, this is an awful movie, but that hardly keeps it from succeeding in so many different ways. First off, and most importantly, it’s incredibly entertaining. Beyond that, at 81 minutes long, you can watch it twice in the span of time that it would take you to watch Titanic once! With time left over! It’s easy to have no idea what’s going on. It’s expected that you won’t understand why anything happens quite the way it does. Don’t hope to discover hidden or ambiguous motivations in any of the characters – they’re all driven by one thing at a time: greed, revenge, duty. Frankly, if it got any more complicated than that, it just wouldn’t be the same movie. It might even hit the 90-minute mark.

Joe Dylanne doesn't take shit from any disrespectful local jerks.

As it stands, Quiet Cool is, for me, a symbol of everything great about cheesy, absurd action movies. (It’s also a particularly excellent representative of the badass-cop-doesn’t-play-by-the-book-but-saves-the-day subgenre.) Everything explodes. Every antagonist dies. Conflicts are very straightforward. There’s a shitty twist. The main characters are practically nonexistent. It breezes along with no concern for plot holes or inconsistencies.

And there’s nothing wrong with any of that, because this movie isn’t struggling to achieve something greater. Its near-idiotic simplicity works in its favor. It’s not a big-budget tentpole feature with a recognizable star. Maybe this was the one that was supposed to catapult James Remar to a Bruce Willis- or Sly Stallone-like level of fame, but that’s not quite how it worked out. It’s an 80-minute long action movie with a weed leaf on the poster, which is a pretty inaccurate poster, at that. (Joshua dressed like Rambo? Joe wearing a tie? New York backdrop?) Quiet Cool seems to have been largely forgotten; I’ve never heard anything about it having a cult following. If it does, I’d like to consider myself a part of it – if it doesn’t, I will watch it with anybody, anytime, until this is the most popular movie ever made.