Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

Roman Sampson One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Cheryl A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Horst in Translation ([email protected]) "Cobra Verde" is a collaboration between West German and Ghana from 1987, so this one will have its 30th anniversary next year. The primary language in here is German and director Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski collaborated here one final time to make this movie. It is not the first film that takes the two to exotic places obviously. The movie runs for 110 minutes approximately and has Kinski play a man who is in charge of supervising slaves, but then he is sent to Africa where he is the only White guy among so so many Black people. Of course, the blonde hair (slightly gray already by then) helps in creating the big contrast in physicality. I cannot say I am familiar with any of the other actors here. Herzog directed of course, but he also wrote the script and for that he adapted Bruce Chatwin's novel. While I love Herzog and Like Kinski, I must say that this film felt a bit like a poor man's version of some of the other work from the duo such as Fitzcarraldo (never been too big on "Aguirre"). The story dragged on quite a few occasions and I must say that overall I did not feel that this was a really exciting movie. Insanity always played a major role, in front of the cameras and certainly also behind the cameras with the volcano that is Klaus Kinski. I would not say that this is a good choice to start getting into Herzog's filmography. I am not at all saying that it was a failure, but it just left me hoping for a better movie and it's far from the best Herzog and Kinski have come up with together. But why would you want to start with this one as it's also a fairly later career effort from Kinski and he was already 60 here. Only 3 Italien films should follow until his death less than five years later. I guess he was probably past peak already for this one too. I don't recommend the watch. Thumbs down.

Guy Plot: A Brazilian bandit is hired by a plantation owner but impregnates his three daughters and in punishment is sent on a suicide mission to re- open the West African slave trade.Director Werner Herzog has a tendency to return to the same themes and character types over and over again. Here, much like in AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD, we have the story of a megalomaniac who exceeds his orders and embarks on a dangerous journey that ends in insanity. Here the details change: Brazilian slaver rather than Conquistador, Dahomey rather than Peru, Amazons rather than the Amazon. The usual grotesques return, from insane kings to hunchbacks and sacred snakes, as does Klaus Kinski, in the lead role again and going madder by the minute. Reams of praise could be written for Kinski but a single look at the poster tells all. The contrast between those too-blue eyes, the hay-blond hair, the jawline big as houses and the insanity in the eyes, the way his features look scraped out, the extraordinary contortions of facial muscles. He has the face of a gargoyle and the taut energy of a cobra. You cannot help but be impressed.Herzog gives him plenty to do. Wandering Brazil in a robe and rifle, with the poise of a saint. Walking through a garden of flamingos shoeless (he doesn't trust shoes). Watching a slave have his arm sucked into the machinery of a sugar plantation and pulped. Marching through an army of Amazonian women warriors, kicking snakes and striking poses. Finally, the last scene, on a beach, needs to be watched - not read about.The whole thing is shot in Herzog's favoured naturalistic documentary style, the music is inseparable from the images, the acting is generally of high quality, the fug of atmosphere is thick enough to cut, the alien landscape (Brazilian slave forts, African castles) bewitching, the madness keeps on growing (Kinski in blackface was particularly funny/scary) and the whole thing builds, inevitably, to the moment where the world overwhelms Kinski and destroys him.

MisterWhiplash For the last time, and not without likely good reason as evidence from Werner Herzog's own documentary My Best Fiend about his most frequent leading man Klaus Kinski, as well as from this specific production (the original cinematographer left after some vicious fights), Herzog put his trust into Kinski as a force to be reckoned with as far as leading an epic film where atmosphere and the nature of the society trumps plot. As with Aguirre: The Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo, the other Herzog/Kinski films in exotic locales with a character absorbed by the environment around him, Cobra Verde ends up being just as much about the extras as it is as its protagonist (or antagonist as it was with Aguirre). The visuals for Herzog, and capturing this African coast as the documentarian he is, are as original and strikingly designed as ever, and this time he even puts in the theme of class into the picture, with satisfactory results.Kinski plays the title character a little different than in the past films, because, perhaps, Cobra Verde, real name Francisco Manoel da Silva, isn't (as) crazy or after some mad obsession like building an opera house in the jungle. He's a peasant in Brazil who gets fired from his work in a gold mining company, and becomes a bandit after killing his boss. He goes from there to work for a sugar baron (Jose Lewgoy), who hires him as a supervisor, but soon finds out he's really a bandit, and impregnated his three daughters. The baron has a meeting with a few others and a plan is hatched- send da Silva to re-open slave trading in West Africa, a seaside village with many potential slaves (not tapped in ten years since none white have come back) still under the rule of a native king. Da Silva, of course, doesn't know what he's in for, and soon he's captured by the tribes-people, almost killed following being black-faced with mud (because, according to tribe law, they cannot kill a white man), and narrowly escapes the King's grasp, then after leading hundreds of women trained for battle for the slave trade, becomes the king himself.As one can imagine, this is another tall tale from Herzog, albeit this time from a novel, and it's supplanted in the filmmaker's interpretation of nature as something wonderful and very cruel (Herzog once was quoted as saying that he loved nature, but "against his better judgment). First it's the nature of a gold mining area, with lots and lots of mud, then with the exotic areas of Brazil where there is a lushness that inform the moral abandon Cobra Verde has in having his way with any woman he wants (one just randomly in a village early on, a little awkwardly). Then, most crucially, with the African tribe, and the castle that is meant to be da Silva's hold-up is in shambles when he arrives. The tribe itself first gets represented by an ex-slave that accompanies da Silva around, almost like a ghost with stories to tell, and then through showing physical things being done like the procession of carrying objects, sacks, in very long lines. Also the manifestation of madness in a civilization, even as small as this West African tribe, by how the king runs things, chopping off heads whenever, and with one slave who's own eyes are reminiscent of Kinski's. Then even more madness comes as Kinski's seemingly calm, observant stare is broken as he trains the women against the king- many, many topless natives who become as bloodthirsty as humanly possible- but then into one last movement of madness that da Silva comes to realize, which is slavery itselfAll of this is presented with Herzog in intriguing form, especially visually in symmetry: a line of slaves on a beach waving flags or in seeing the red head-covers the women wear during training crossing paths, or in just getting an intense close-up of Kinski's face. And Kinski takes on this somewhat complex character with the gusto he's famous for (his eyes, of course, are part of it with, who acts just as much if not more intensely with them than Pacino). Yet there's also a lack of urgency, unlike where it could be felt in almost every frame of Aguirre, Fitzcarraldo or Woyzeck. The message about slavery towards the end becomes preachy, except maybe for how it relates to da Silva with him not being able to escape his own fate. It also doesn't help that Herzog's focus from documentary form on the natives to narrative on da Silva doesn't work because of the storytelling-shift based on Herzog's interest in one side or another as opposed to coherency. This said, there are many haunting moments in the film that rank up as the director's best, especially the final images, which speak to not only the closing of one of the most unique collaborations between actor/director in cinema, but one that calls back Fitzcarraldo, as da Silva tries to push a boat out to sea, only this time without any dreams or madness.

spacemonkey_fg Director Werner Herzog and actor Klaus Kinsky did many films together. They were all spectacular because of Herzogs direction and they all had an intensely insane looking leading man because of Kinskys solid performances. Cobra Verde was their last collaboration together because three years after making this film Kinsky died. He left a great legacy as an actor and Cobra Verde is a prime example of that.The story is about Francisco Manuel (aka the Bandit of Cobra Verde) a bandit who goes from town to town looking for a strange new world. Basically everyone fears him because he is untamable, like a wild beast. One day, he gets a job taking care of slaves in a Sugar Cane field and he gets to live in the same house as his boss, the owner of the fields. Cobra Verde being the bandit that he is has his way with not one, but all three of the bosses daughters and gets them pregnant. The boss, looking for a way to get back at Cobra Verde for what he did, sends him on a mission to Africa to buy more slaves. Of course the bosses real intentions are to get Cobra Verde killed in the journey. What they don't know is that Cobra Verde is not a person who easily gives up and hes a tough cookie to kill. And so begins Cobra Verdes journey into the hot, deadly and colorful depths of Africa.This movie, like many of Herzogs films is a journey into the unknown. I love how Herzog does that in all his films. Transporting us to strange places that truly exist, but are so wondrous and amazing that they have a surreal dreamlike feel to them. On Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre we went deep into the Amazonian Jungle, but on Cobra Verde we get to see the heart and soul of Africa. Once the movie gets to Africa (on its second half) things get really interesting and you will find yourselves completely immersed in the African culture. From the injustices of slavery to the savagery of African tribes. It was all new, strange and different to me because Herzog really went in there and found incredible real life locations in which to shoot Cobra Verde. Its as if Herzog searches out these incredible places, dives deep into them, and then brings them back to us via his films for us to enjoy. This movie is epic in scale and it shows in every single frame of film. We get hundreds of extras in many scenes. One particular scene stood out and its the one in which Kinsky trains hundreds of African women all dressed in their war attire and marching while singing their war songs. It was fantastic and epic and I loved every second of it. Not only that but its even more amazing when I learned that this huge looking film only cost two million dollars to make! I was unaware that a film of such grand scale could be made with so little money. Hollywood could learn a thing or two from Herzogs style of film-making.Klaus Kinsky once again turns in an intense performance as the titular character. He certainly goes in a journey from being a bandit to becoming the king of an African tribe. I really got to like his character because he is a guy who literally does what he wants and has complete freedom over what to do with his life. Nobody tells this guy what to do, but once he sets his sites on achieving a goal (and its usually something pretty daunting) he goes all the way to make it happen.Even when he accepts the responsibilities and challenges involved in going to Africa and taking slaves back to Brazil considering that slavery is almost completely abolished, he does it with a sure hand, ready to face whatever situations life might hurl at him. And Kinsky does all this with his own brand style, that crazy look the wild hair. In one particular scene in which he is training thousands of African women to go to war he goes completely ballistic trying to teach them how to properly handle a shield and a spear. I've got a few complaints though, this movie has a few loopholes and unrealistic situations. I think a lot of it has to do with Herzog trying to evoke a feeling of otherworldliness and strangeness but in one particular scene Cobra Verde has to send a message from on place to another and he does it via thousands of people standing in line doing these secret signals with white flags and one person duplicates the message until it reaches the other person hundreds of miles away. This scene might lend itself for a beautiful and strange image, but its completely unrealistic! But I was willing to let it go for sake of artistic liberty. Another thing that grated me the wrong way was how one of the African kings spoke perfect English, as well as all his followers. The scene would have been a lot more believable with the king having a translator, but as it was filmed, its hard to believe that a king in the middle of Africa would speak English, and much less have all his thousands of followers understand him and cheer him. Again, a minor set back in a great film.Like many of Herzogs films, the pace is sometimes slow, but when Herzog wants to amaze you he will. There will be moments of heavy dialog, and slow situations and then Whamo! Herzog will hit you in the head with something truly amazing. Trust me on this, this movie has many surprises up its sleeves! And you wont be disappointed if you enjoy movies that take you to strange new worlds.Rating: 4 out of 5