Fucking A!
I can’t stand this.
For example, of the complete directorial catalog of Sylvester Stallone on DVD, and I can’t get anybody to watch it with me.
I mean Staying Alive is a masterwork, and a hallmark of both John Travolta’s acting ability and Sly Stallone’s transcendant subtlety in directorial skill. I mean the way the play in the movie, Hell’s Alley, mirrors Travolta’s life, the Joyceian theme of man versus society, the struggle for integrity, the feathered hair, the leg warmers, what more do you want?
Most directors find a niche and never leave it. Stallone though shows incredible bravery and scope. C.O.B.R.A. features Stallone as both Director and lead! He places a cop, a basic man, a throwback to the fifties who finds himself at odds with society and the modern atrocities that humans perpetrate on each other. His vision is simple. Crime is a disease, he is the cure.
Stallone’s primitive basicness is contrasted by Brigitte Nielson who plays a supermodel. In one scene the whole thematic tableau is thrown out before us like a raw wound, as Nielson poses in a futuristic model shoot featuring lots of robots and tin foil while Stallone watches, in Jeans and a t shirt, chewing on a match, expressionless as his mirrored shades. In this moment it becomes clear that Stallone’s character Cobretti, is actually tortured by his own sensitivity.
Of course I couldn’t leave this thread without mentioning the climactic battle scene between the bad guy and Cobretti which takes place in a factory. Only a Director of Stallone’s capacity could have that meat hook float through the scene no less than eight times, yet have it still be a total surprise when Stallone lifts the bad guy up on the meathook and impales him.
Again, there’s Joycean twist as the meathook carries the bad guy away into the furnace that symbolizes the future, as Stallone watches through his mirrored shades.
Nobody will watch these with me. Nobody understands.
