It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

This is being said with a very heavy heart, due to admiring Herzog hugely as a film-maker and to me Kinski gave some of his best work in his work with Herzog. Their previous collaborations ranged from very good to masterpiece status.'Fitzcarraldo' particularly is what cinema is all about, and 'Aguirre Wrath of God' is a ground-breaking achievement. 'Nosferatu', a visually stunning and quite riveting homage to the 1922 FW Murnau masterpiece, and 'Woyzeck', very powerful stuff, are not quite as good but still great. 'Cobra Verde' is certainly not an awful film and is watchable, but Herzog and Kinski's last collaboration is also their weakest to me and it's lesser Herzog overall too.'Cobra Verde' is certainly not without redeeming qualities. The best thing about it is that it's visually stunning, there is a sweeping majesty but also a stark but rich atmosphere making for some truly arresting images. The music score is suitably haunting and rousing.Kinski gives his usual intense and effortlessly charismatic performance, and there are some wonderfully sensual and surreal parts. Herzog has delivered more on the substance in other films of his but there is a little evidence of that here, and there is no denying that he delivers on the style.Sadly, the story is the least cohesive and involving of Herzog and Kinski's films together. 'Cobra Verde' is marred by a sluggish pace, that is not helped by having scenes that go on for too long, and by having storytelling that is chaotic and sometimes incomplete-feeling which doesn't make the film so easy to follow. It's not hugely lengthy (being under two hours), but this is the only film of Herzog and Kinski that feels too long and like the story was nowhere near enough in content to justify the length.Very little is done to make the characters interesting. The titular character is done in a way that's trademark Herzog (eccentric character in difficult environment) but too much of a pale shadow of far better developed variations of the same type of character in 'Aguirre' and 'Fitzcarraldo'. Some of 'Cobra Verde' also feels excessively overdone thematically and uninspired, good ideas for content but with not enough done with it.Dialogue here is the least thought-provoking and natural-sounding of their collaborations together, often sounding on the awkward side. None of the rest of the performances stand out in any way, practically lost amongst the wonderful images but messy storytelling.In conclusion, Herzog and Kinski's final, and weakest, collaboration together. 5/10 Bethany Cox

Francisco da Silva (Klaus Kinski), known as the bandit Cobra Verde, muses wistfully: "I long to go forth from here to another world." Barefoot and penniless, he resorts to robbery whenever the opportunity presents itself and villagers flee at the sight of him. At a slave auction, he intercepts a young slave trying to flee. "Don't run away," he tells the man: "It'll only be worse for you." HOW it could be worse is never really explained, but da Silva's handling of the situation so impresses a sugar plantation owner that he hires da Silva to be his overseer on the spot. Da Silva promptly knocks up the man's three young mulatto daughters. This leads to his "assignment" to an abandoned Brazilian fortress on the West coast of Africa. It's reckoned that he won't survive there because the slave trade is being interrupted on the high seas by British ships and because the Africans themselves have tired of doing (dirty) business with White Men. He begins to amass slaves for shipment, only to find that his shipments are being hijacked by the very men who sent him to the island. He is captured by a tribe of Africans and prepared for execution: his face is painted black (because the Africans "can't kill a White Man") and he's trussed up and delivered to the local King for Final Judgement. He's (obviously) upset: "In this place, the dead are more alive than the living." The night before his execution, he's rescued by rebels led by the "insane" Prince of the same tribe that wants to kill him and is put in charge of training a (topless) female army of "Amazons" to overpower the feckless male tribesmen. (NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC was never THIS graphic...) COBRA VERDE is an outstanding piece of filmmaking (par for the course for Herzog) and manages to deal with a touchy subject far more effectively than any other movie I've seen about same (slavery). While it's uncomfortable, indeed, to see Kinski leering at some of the (topless) young girls who come out to sing for him, it's well within the bounds of believability. It's one of the Truest moments in the movie, an unabashed look into the Dark Heart of us all. "Slavery is an element of the human heart," Kinski observes: "To our ruin!" The ending, in which a young man horribly disfigured by polio dogs Kinski's heels as he seeks to leave the island, is the perfect denouement.

I have to admit the plot of "Cobra Verde" was less impressive and coherent than I anticipated (or hoped…) to be, but it doesn't matter all that much, because this is purely Klaus Kinski's movie. Even though the status and reputation of this movie is too often overshadowed by reports of conflicts & hostility between the director and the lead star, Werner Herzog still undeniably brings some sort of homage to Kinski here. During a lot of scenes, the camera just purposelessly follows him around and there's an incredibly large amount of shots that simply show his facial expressions, and more particularly his insanity-filled eyes, in extreme close-ups. Much more than any film of his that I've seen so far, "Cobra Verde" represents Kinski's most obsessive performance. The lovely title refers to the nickname of Francisco Manuel Da Silva, obviously played by Kinski. At the beginning of the film Da Silva is an ordinary early 19th Century Brazilian farmer mourning over the loss of a beloved one, but in no time he promotes himself into a relentless bandit. His charisma and fearful influence on the locals have him spotted by a sugar-plantation tycoon, who engages Cobra Verde to guard his slaves. But when he impregnates not just one but all three daughters of his employer, Cobra Verde is exiled to Africa to recruit a new slaves and deport them to Brazil. This is meant to be a certain death mission, as the destination – the kingdom of Dahomey – is at war with its neighbors, forbidding slave trade and its king is possibly the one person on earth madder than Da Silva himself. King Adahee (who, for example, wants all dogs killed because they conspire against humans at night) commands to execute Cobra Verde but he escapes, joins the rebellion and trains the fighting skills of an army of over a 1.000 topless women! The screenplay, adapted from a novel by the acclaimed writer Bruce Chatwin, is slightly disappointing because the study on colonialism is rather clichéd, one-dimensional and shallow. The slaves wear chains around their necks, yet the walk around singing and smiling to the crazed white man. The multiple sequences involving mass activity, for example Kinski training the warrior women and a cross-country human telegraph line, as well as the portrayal of typically African rites (dancing and a lot singing) are visually staggering but admittedly they add very little substance. "Cobra Verde" is, as extendedly stated above, a purely brilliant one-man Kinski show. From the scenes where he dominantly arrives in Africa, wearing a grotesque Napoleonesque hat, to the unsettling climax in which he vainly attempts to escapes from the continent as well as from his own personal demons, Kinski is one indescribably fascinating & compelling individual.

'Cobra Verde' is at times a confusing and awkward story about a bandit who finds himself trapped within the slave trade business. What begins as a story of a feared outlaw turns out to be a story examining African cultures and the issue of slavery itself. What makes this movie more interesting than other American films slavery is that the viewer gets to see the other side of the story; the story told from an African viewpoint. International star Klaus Kinski stars a Cobra Verde. He is a feared bandit whom many people fear. When he appears in a small town, all the people runs inside their houses because they are scared to death of him. Many things are missing from Cobra Verde's past. How did he become such a feared bandit? The movie does not answer that question. Through a series of odd circumstances, he is eventually put into the slavery trade business by a group of rich aristocrats. He is sent to Africa, where it is hoped he will be killed because of the slave trade conflicts going on there. What happens is th exact opposite. He gains the trust of the African villagers and eventually trains an army to kill and enemy foe. All the while the viewers are treated to an inside look at some African customs, religions, superstitions, and society. A beautifully made film that is a little marred by changes in the sequences of the story and many things missing from the plot. Nonetheless, this film has one of the most memorable and touching death scenes I have ever seen. Bravo to Klaus Kinski.