Cobra Verde
Theatrical Film, 1987
Director: Do I really have to keep repeating this?
The Story
Klaus Kinski plays Francisco Manoel de Silva aka Cobra Verde, a notorious Brazilian bandit. After being hired as an overseer on a sugar plantation, our hero(?) takes it upon himself to impregnate all three of the owner’s daughters. This doesn’t sit too well with daddy, so he cooks up a scheme to send Cobra Verde to West Africa to reopen the slave trade thus inviting certain death (what with the malaria and mad African kings and whatnought). Even though he knows what the situation is, our bandit cum slaver sets off for Dahomey anyway, ‘cause, hey why not, right? Will everything go to plan? Or will Cobra Verde prove tenacious enough to defy expectations? Is the sky blue? Is Wener Herzog a complete loon? (the answer to three of those questions: yes).
Review
Ah, here it is. The last Kinski/Herzog collaboration. And it is not their greatest. Don’t get me wrong – I enjoyed this movie on a certain level – but this doesn’t stand up to their greatest works together. I still enjoyed this more than Woyzeck though.
Klaus Kinski is barely contained in this film. Reportedly he was almost completely insane and impossible to work with by this time. I wonder why Herzog agreed to work with him again on this at all (Oh, wait. No I don’t. I don’t wonder at all. It’s because he’s frickin’ nuts. And a complete masochist). His performance though is once again completely captivating. Dull and laconic one moment then raging and animated the next, Kinski goes all out. This movie could have been called Kinski Unchained. Even though I don’t think it’s his best performance, Kinski does a pretty good job here, almost making me root for a bandit and a slaver (almost). The other actors in Cobra Verde are pretty good as well.
As is typical for a Herzog movie, the scenery and imagery are gorgeous and unforgettable. This being Werner Herzog we actually get shots of Brazil and Western Africa instead of substitute locations, and my eyes and sense of disbelief thank him for it. Herzog is also great at setting up iconic and very memorable scenes. My favorite part of the movie: Klaus Kinski training and leading a horde of bare-breasted African Amazon warriors into battle! If that sentence doesn’t want to make you watch this movie then I don’t know what will.
However, the story itself is a mixed bag for me. It’s very disjointed. Events just sort of happen one after another in the early part of the film and don’t flow together that well. It does get better in the second part of the film though, once Cobra Verde gets to Africa. But the end feels tacked on, especially with the main character declaring slavery a “crime” right out of the blue. Wait, what the hell? This is a man who has had no problem selling other human beings into servitude but when the slave trade is abolished he suddenly flips his position? It’s possible that Herzog might be making a statement on slavery as a whole – people who have enslaved others declaring slavery immoral only after it has been abolished – but it all just feels arbitrary to me. Especially since the institution of slavery itself was treated very dispassionately throughout the rest of the movie; you can see the pain and suffering inherent to the system but there is no moral statement from the filmmaker – it's almost like a documentary. You see it yourself and can judge it for yourself. Herzog just supplies the images – right up until the end. Oh well.
Cobra Verde isn’t a bad movie by any means, though. In fact it’s a very entertaining one, albeit one with some major flaws. I would still recommend it though to anyone who enjoys historical adventure movies or anyone who wants to see Klaus Kinski act up a storm (you will not be disappointed). Or anyone who wants to SEE! a horde of bare-BREASTED African Amazon WARRIORS overthrow an INSANE monarch in a kingdom of DEATH!
Screenshots
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| "It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day in the neighborhood...." |
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| No wisecracks for this shot, I just liked it. |
AHH! This has to be the scariest dude in the entire movie.
Look into his eyes and despair!
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| D'AH! Stop It! You're haunting my nightmares! Mommy! |
A Horde of BARE BREASTED AFRICAN AMAZON WARRIORS
waiting for the signal to attack. Either that or a horde of African nerds
waiting outside the convention center for AfriCon '87.
Okay, what the hell is Cobra Verde doing with a Lee-Enfield bolt-action rifle?
It's fifty years too early! If Africans were able to get their hands on weapons like
this they would have been able to make mincemeat out of the Europeans when
they came to colonize Africa later in the century.
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| It's an animal. In a Herzog movie. One guess as to what happens to it. |
The DVD
Once again the Anchor Bay DVD is a mixed bag. The picture quality is pretty good with a few screw ups here and there. The subtitles were okay though they didn’t match what was being said on the screen a few times (which is pretty egregious considering I only know a few words in German). The only extras of note on the disc are the original trailers and a commentary by Herzog, which I’ll have to listen to one of these days. You know, I actually kind of wish the Criterion Collection would release these on DVD, I think they would do a better job.
Next Week: My Best Fiend
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