That was an excellent one.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Dark and downbeat war epic which is a far cry from Antonio Margheriti's frivolous earlier offerings along the line of CODENAME WILDGEESE and TIGER JOE. Here Fabrizio De Angelis is determined to make his film as gritty as he possibly can so there are no happy endings or surprise victories. It's like some unrelenting horror film and, be warned, is pretty grim to watch! Don't get me wrong, though, as the film still offers up lots of mindless action. We get exploding helicopters, shoot-outs, dozens of bad guys being mown down at a time by a single soldier, shacks exploding, violent torture flashbacks, boats and vehicles exploding, chases, grenades, guards being blown from their towers and prison breaks. The case with the action in these films is, if you've seen one you've seen 'em all. The most popular is Margheriti's THE LAST HUNTER, mainly because it was just about the first real Italian gung-ho jungle adventure movie made and many more followed in its wake.What COBRA MISSION does have is a great cast to recommend it. The four heroes are made up of the ageing Christopher Connelly (who died of cancer a few years later), European hearthrob Oliver Tobias, John Wayne's son Ethan (!) and genre stalwart John Steiner, here playing an American after many years as a Brit in Margheriti's movies. Support comes from the reliable Donald Pleasence in a small role as a priest who doubles as an arms supplier, Margheriti's regular Luciano Pigozzi in a tiny role as one of the parents of the P.O.W.s and former strongman Gordon Mitchell as the tough Colonel Mortimer, surprisingly not playing the bad guy this time around as is usual for him (well, he is bad, kind of, but he's just obeying orders and the script gives him a human character). Finally we have action director Enzo G. Castellari cameoing as a cohort who helps our heroes on their mission.The film opens with a prison escapee being mown down by enemy soldiers. This same kind of image recurrs throughout the movie giving it a hard edge, and it's a more thoughtful film than the rest. Most of the characters we see are tired, sweaty, drugged up or simply peed off. A shocking flashback shows one of the men being bloodily whipped while tied naked to a tree. Probably the film's most harrowing moment for me was when the Vietcong girl turns around and shoots one of the men in cold blood, at the same time displaying the scars on her chest which are a result of the American napalm. This comes as a real surprise and was totally unexpected on my part, although in retrospect with similar scenes in APOCALYPSE NOW and the like I really should have seen it coming.Despite offering up plenty of cheesy action for genre lovers, COBRA MISSION is a very downbeat movie so you won't come away with a smile at the end. It may make you think though, which is why I recommend it. A sequel followed shortly afterwards, which ISN'T a surprise to me!

Three old army buddies are brought together again at the wedding of one of them. Going out for a drink afterward the men go to look up an commanding officer to talk over old times. The officer was drummed out of the military for insisting that there were still soldiers in Viet Nam. The buddies needing something to believe in head to Southeast Asia and with the hep of a radical french priest, head off to rescue the Americans still being held. Good exploitation film echos Uncommon Valor and Rambo 2 keeps moving fast enough that the silliness of it all falls by the wayside. The action is good enough that you end up wanting to know what happens. Definitely a film to watch when you want mindless action while you curl up on the couch. Between 6 and 7

Boy, oh boy. This movie came very close to becoming my favorite unintentionally hilarious b-movie ever. The first half was priceless (after a slow start). The 2nd half, however, prevented this movie from enjoying a spot in my Bad Movie Top 10.What makes the first half of this movie so awesome? Well, to put it bluntly, it's so inept that it's nothing short of (unintentional) comic gold. Basically, we have four Vietnam veterans who become increasingly agitated by the fact that there are known POWs still languishing within prison camps inside of Vietnam. They develop a "plan" to return to Vietnam to rescue the aforementioned POWs. What's insanely amusing about their "plan", is that there really isn't a plan at all. They simply up and leave their families and jobs and fly to Vietnam. Once in 'Nam, they walk around until they bump into someone who has sensitive information concerning the whereabouts of POWs. If this movie is any indication, just about everyone in Vietnam knows sensitive information about POWs and POW camps.Our stalwart veterans keep bumping into folks with sensitive information, and keep referring to their nonexistent plan. Through a series of nearly incomprehensible, and comical, events, they obtain a large cache of weaponry. Now suitably armed, they begin their trek into the jungle via boat and truck.From here the movie becomes standard action movie fare. Like most action movies of similar ilk, our heroes display remarkable... nay, supernatural... abilities when it comes to open combat. They never miss, they're never hit, and they have no problem even when grossly outnumbered. The "ambush" segment is priceless: our heroes waiting in the brush, clearly visible to the horde of advancing enemies (who, apparently, thought they were merely approaching foliage eerily shaped like Vietnam veterans armed with M16s). At the decisive moment, one of our heroes yells "Fire!". The end result: 30+ dead assailants, and 4 unscathed Vietnam veterans.This begins the desultory second half of the movie. From here, our heroes encounter more enemies, refer to their mystery plan, and, ultimately, locate a POW camp -- which they summarily destroy, rescuing all the POWs in the process. In a surprising twist, one of our main characters, Mark (Ethan Wayne), is killed by a jilted Vietnamese woman.Our heroes, with POWs in tow, begin the process of extracting themselves from Vietnam. As you can imagine, this involves several combats involving imbecilic opponents, and super-human accuracy on the part of our heroes.Near the very end, our heroes are informed that all their work was for naught -- due to some bizarre political arrangement, the POWs must remain in Vietnam, and know one can know about their existence.The end.Bad movie score: 7/10 Good movie score: 5/10.

Perhaps the main appeal in watching De Angelis's films (for me) is in coming in with low expectations and every now and then being surprised by how well some of the elements work. COBRA MISSION is a weird example because it features an excellent cast of B-movie stalwarts and even some cameos by Enzo G. Castellari, Luciano Pigozzi, Gordon Mitchell, and possibly Dardano Sacchetti. Francesco De Masi composed a moving, yet jarring and unmemorable orchestral score for the film but it is seldom used in favor of stock music from De Masi's previous films with De Angelis (a good call maybe, but distracting).There's lots of action and explosions but most of the time it's ruined by veteran producer Fabrizio De Angelis's budget-minded approach to filmmaking. At times the film is edited and shot in a very hands-off and lazy fashion. For some reason De Angelis likes to end his scenes with something exploding, but unlike in THUNDER WARRIOR uses his slow motion really infrequently. Some of the non-slow-mo explosions don't look very dramatic at all, and it seems like an incredible waste considering how much De Angelis must have dished out on the transportation and production costs associated with making the Philippines look like Vietnam.Maybe the most surprising aspect of the film is its fairly well-done downbeat ending. Christopher Connelly does some pretty hilarious scenery chewing, but in the end the audience really does feel sympathy for Ethan Wayne as the soldier that got left behind. The final shot of Wayne kneeling in the field while the camera pulls away from him to reveal a huge army of advancing Vietnamese soldiers surrounding him is one of the best and most memorable shots I've seen in a low-budget action movie.As is the case with DEADLY IMPACT, THUNDER WARRIOR, and THE MANHUNT, it's a mid-80's De Angelis film which I know is bad, but for some reason I just love watching it over and over.