John Herzfeld

The story opens as two men come through US customs in New York. Oleg (Oleg Taktarov) is taking pictures, and Emil (Karel Roden) is nervous. Oleg is interested in photography and movies, and spouts on to the customs agent. Across town Robert Hawkins (Kelsey Grammer) is arguing with his assistant Cassandra (Kim Cattrall) about his news network, stating that tragedy sells more. Cassandra wants to raise ratings, and they decide to film Detective Eddie Fleming (Robert DeNiro) as he does a stakeout. Eddie is a drunk, but a regular media attraction when sober. Eddie preps for his bust, and Robert's film crew follows the action, but misses the key scene. Oleg goes "shopping" for a camera, then films Emil as they arrive at Milos's (Vladimir Mashkov) apartment to collect their share of a bank job. Milos tells Emil that Oleg got them caught and an argument ensures. Email wants his money, but Milos does not have it. Emil stabs Milos and strangles his wife, while Oleg films and neighbor Daphne (Vera Farmiga) watches, hidden. Emil hears her leaving but cannot stop her. Emil hides the bodies with a "Bohemian BBQ", dousing them in acetone. Fire Marshal Jordy Warsaw (Edward Burns) gets the call for the fire. After subduing a would-be mugger, he arrives at the apartment fire, crossing paths with Eddie. Jordy finds a timer and deduces the fire is a homicide. Daphne tries to flag Jordy down, but the crowd is too big. Emil has Daphne's wallet, and realizes she is in the country illegally. He finds a card for an escort service and calls the number, asking for a Czech girl. He and oleg start learning American values from shows like Rosie O'Donnell and Robert Hawkin's. The hooker arrives, and Emil tries to get information from her, but she knows nothing, and Emil kills her. Jordy and his partner Bobby (John DiResta) return to the fire station and are rebuked by Fire Chief Marshal Declan Duffy (James Handy) for handing evidence to Eddie. Jordy tries to get a sketch of Daphne, sensing she has a story to tell. He returns to the burned-out apartment and finds Eddie. Eddie gets a call about the dead hooker, and tags along. Eddie deduces that there were two killers, and the murder weapon may match the one used on Milos. Eddie and Jordy visit the escort service and talk to Rose (Charlize Theron). Rose recognizes Daphne from the police sketch, and also reveals that Emil and Oleg were inquiring about her. Eddie and Jordy race to the nail salon where Daphne works. Oleg and Emil are already there (Oleg filming, getting his "15 minutes of fame"). Emil gives her a warning, and they leave right before Jordy arrives. The cops see them and give chase, but they escape, beating Detective Jackson (Avery Brooks) and stealing his wallet/gun, and also shooting Bobby. Eddie fires a shot, hitting Emil in the foot, but they escape. Eddie and Jordy interview Daphne, and she reveals that she once shot a cop who was raping her sister. Jordy asks to interview her alone, since she is scared. Daphne tries to get Jordy to let her shower before going to the police station. Eddie meets with his girlfriend Nicolette (Melina Kanakaredes), and tries to propose to her in Greek. Nicolette is a reporter, and gets an urgent call from the network, right in the middle of his proposal. Email and Oleg go through Detective Jackson's wallet and find Eddie's home address. At the police station, Jordy's boss complains to him about the shower, but Eddie covers for him, although he laters tells Jordy it was a mistake. At home, Eddie is working on his proposal routine when Oleg and Emil show up and knock him out. When he comes to, they have bound him to a chair. Emil lays out his plan: he will plead insanity to the murders, based on the fact that they film their murders, and will later write books about their experience (like they've seen on TV). Eddie fights them, but is stabbed to death. At Eddie's wake, Emil calls Robert and tells him he has a film of Eddie's death, and wants to sell it. Robert pays them. Meanwhile, Jordy takes Daphne to her apartment to collect her things, and the light switch starts a booby-trap - fire. Oleg and Email watch from an adjacent building. They leave as the fire department arrives, and Jordy escapes with Daphne. Meanwhile, the police have learned about the tape of Eddie's death, and try to get it before it's broadcast. Oleg and Emil celebrate in a restaurant as the tape airs, and other patrons recognize them. Oleg and Email argue over the film credits, and Oleg stabs Emil and leaves with the money. Hawkins arrives with his TV crew and a lawyer, but Emil realizes Oleg toook the money. Jordy bursts in and Emil is arrested, proclaiming his insanity. Jordy takes Emil to an abandoned warehouse, but cannot kill him in cold blood. The police arrive and take Emil into custody. Emil's lawyer (Bruce Cutler) starts Emil's defense, and Emil offers him 30% of his book/movie revenue. Oleg angrily watches Emil getting press. Daphne goes back to the Czech Republic to stand trial, and Jordy comes under fire for how he dealt with the mugger. Jordy is on scene when Emil is led to his arraignment, intending to kill him, but cannot. Oleg shows Hawkins the tape where Emil explains his plan to use the double jeopardy laws to excape prosecution, and tries to shoot Emil. Emil grabs a gun and shoots Oleg, then grabs Nicolette. Jordy shoots Emil repeatedly, killing him. Oleg films himself dying; Hawkins grabs his camera. Jordy returns Eddie's badge to Nicolette. Hawkins offers to help Jordy, and gets punched in the face. Jordy stalks off, and the credits roll.

In the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles County, two hit-men, Lee Woods (James Spader) and Dosmo Pizzo (Danny Aiello), break into a house at night and walk into a bedroom where a sleeping couple, aspiring Olympic athlete Becky Foxx (Teri Hatcher) and her ex-husband Roy Foxx (Peter Horton) are in bed. Lee injects Becky with a tranquilizer then shoots Roy in the head. Lee and Dosmo then drive to an abandoned area off Mulholland Drive, where Lee shoots Dosmo and blows up the car in order to set Dosmo up as the fall guy for the murder. Lee flees the scene with his Swedish girlfriend, Helga Svelgen (Charlize Theron) where they hide out at a local hotel bungalow. However, Dosmo was wearing a bulletproof vest and survived the shooting and car explosion. He seeks shelter at the mansion of wealthy art dealer, Allan Hopper (Greg Cruttwell) where he takes Hopper and his assistant, Susan Parish (Glenne Headly) hostage. Dosmo is unaware that Hopper has called his sister, Audrey Hopper (Marsha Mason) a nurse, to come to the house. On her way, Audrey picks up Teddy Peppers (Paul Mazursky) a down-and-out TV producer contemplating suicide. The next morning, Becky awakens and discovers Roy's body in bed beside her. She runs from her house and flags down two police detectives, young, ambitious Wes Taylor (Eric Stoltz) and cynical veteran Alvin Strayer (Jeff Daniels) who are driving by. Although he is sympathetic, Wes begins to suspect that Becky knows more than she is saying. It turns out that Becky was the one who had hired Lee and Dosmo to kill Roy for $30,000, but was unaware that they would kill Roy in her own house. When Audrey arrives at Allan's house, Dosmo takes both her and Teddy hostage as well as forces Audrey to tend to his wounds in exchange for her not being harmed. Meanwhile, Lee goes back to the house to get the money, encounters homicide detectives Creighton (Keith Carradine) and Carla Valenzuela (Ada Maris) working the crime scene, and kills them both. Wes decides to return to the crime scene to see if he can offer any insight on the case. Masquerading as one of the detectives, Lee lures Wes outside, intending to kill him. In Lee's bungalow, Becky and Helga get into an argument, which escalates into a fight. After being smashed over the head with a vase by Becky, Helga reaches across the bed to grab her gun from her purse, but Becky realizes this and runs and grabs the gun as well to prevent herself from being shot. In a confused fight for the gun, Helga ends up getting shot and wounded in her left side, after which Becky escapes from the hotel with Helga shooting at her from the doorway of the room multiple times but missing with each shot. Helga finds her way to Becky's house, where Lee has knocked Wes unconscious. Lee reluctantly decides to kill Helga instead of taking her to the hospital, concluding that her wound is too severe to be treated, but his gun jams. He turns to retrieve Wes' gun but finds that Helga has escaped and has flagged down a passing car containing Dosmo and his four hostages. Audrey jumps out of the moving car and tries to help the dying Helga, but Helga dies on the roadside. Wes is caught in the middle of a shootout between Dosmo and Lee, and is shot in both of his legs. Just before Lee can kill Dosmo, Teddy shoots Lee, killing him. A grateful Wes allows Dosmo to take the $30,000 and escape with Susan. The following day, Teddy shows up to an anniversary party that Audrey is attending. In the final scene, as Susan and Dosmo drive down a highway leaving Los Angeles behind them, Dosmo contemplates using the money to start a pizzeria in Brooklyn. Susan smiles and he kisses her.

"Crime is a disease. Meet the cure." Lt. Marion Cobretti, nicknamed Cobra (Sylvester Stallone), is a sun-glass wearing, toothpick chewing cop who is all about getting the criminals and breaking the rules. He has the entire department on his back all the time about his very violent and forceful way of getting the bad guys, normally making the punks end up in a body bag, loaded with lead issued from his trusty pearl handled Colt .45. LA, like most cities, is witnessing a crime wave with a violent crime every 25 seconds, a murder every 24 minutes and 250 sexual assaults on women every day. When a mass shooting at a Los Angeles supermarket evolves into a hostage crisis, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) summons Lieutenant Marion Cobretti of their elite Zombie Squad, to resolve the incident. Cobretti, nicknamed Cobra, confronts the shooter, who espouses social Darwinist ideals and mentions a New World. Cobretti kills him before he can execute a group of hostages. Detective Monte reprimands Cobretti for disregarding police procedure and Cobretti admonishes a group of reporters for not prioritizing the safety of potential victims. Unknown to the authorities, the supermarket incident is part of a string of violent crimes committed by The New World, a social Darwinist cult that despises modern society and believes in killing the weak, leaving only the strongest and smartest to rule. But Cobra is set a real challenge when a killer cult is spreading rapidly in the city. The cult kills innocent people, seeming picking random victims and slaying them with jagged knifes and getting off on the hunted's fear. But they make a huge mistake when they kill a woman at a bus stop and a young model sees them. She doesn't exactly know that they've killed someone, but is extremely scared when one of the killers, a muscle bound and rather deformed looking man, gives her a spine-chilling look. Soon the killers are after her! And they kill her photographer, a security guard and very nearly make her meet their sadistic style of murder. Cobra is soon on the scene, with his partner the junk food loving, Sergeant Gonzales (Reni Santoni). They ask the young model, whose name turns out to be Ingrid (Brigitte Nielsen), if she saw the killers. She says she only saw some people at the bus stop acting very odd and a man who scared her badly. But Cobra's progress into solving the case is halted by the pencil pushing, fat headed Detective Monte (Andrew Robinson), who is always on his case about too much force. He tells Cobra that he's on the Zombie squad for a reason, he's too violent and doesn't please the press. Much to Monte's disgust, the Chief Halliwell (Val Avery) and Captain Sears (Art LaFleur) decided to let Cobra use his street wise talk to fight the killer. Cobra goes through the entire population of the nocturnal seediness of downtown, where all the prostitutes, pimps, bar flies and cons of the city hang out. But he doesn't find any kind of help from these people, and they have no idea who the killers are. Cobra soon connects a supermarket killing, that involved a psycho who claimed that he was part of "the new order" who would wipe out the weak and make the strong survive, to the mass murders ripping at the soft under belly of the capital. But Detective Monte's smart mouth antics and somewhat spineless Captain Sears try to stop him from using aggressive force, not caring that Ingrid almost got killed by one of the cult followers, Night Slasher (Brian Thompson) and that numerous other people were slayed in the hospital at night. Knudsen is placed under the protective custody of Cobretti and his partner Sergeant Tony Gonzales following an attempt on her life. The Captain agrees to let Cobra take Ingrid to the countryside with Gonzales and a female cop named Nancy Stalk (Lee Garlington). Cobretti and Gonzales leave with Knudsen to the small town of San Remos. Little does Cobra know that the heat is going to be turned up instead of cooled off when they leave the city. Nancy is in fact a cult member and leading the Night Slasher and his cronies right to where Cobra is taking Ingrid. Despite not trusting Stalk, Cobretti does nothing and the group spends the night in a motel. While in a motel that's off the beaten track, Ingrid and Cobra realize their attraction to one another. The romantic mood is short lived however, and the cult is back on Cobra's trail. At dawn, the New World arrives in San Remos on motorcycles and besieges the town on Stalk's instructions. In a shootout, Cobretti kills many cultists, but Gonzales is wounded. The cult burn down the motel and almost kill Gonzales. Cobra and Ingrid ride off in a pick-up truck and almost meet their end by crashing into a burning car that's blocking the road. Cobra still manages to take some punks down though, with a very nice piece of weaponry called the laser mount sub-machine gun. They end up in a chemical factory and finally Night Slasher and Cobra come face to face. In a very psychotic speech Night Slasher says that Cobra's law is weak and that their cult will always survive. This sends Cobra off the deep end and Slasher onto a huge metal hook, that rips through his back and sends him off into a molten vat of metal. Nancy however is still alive and tries to kill Cobra, but she is also killed. After all the bloodshed, Cobra and Ingrid emerged slightly bruised and dirty, from the factory. The Captain congratulates Cobra, but Monte is too proud to actually admit that Cobra won the fight. He picks up his bit about too much excessive force, but earns himself a good punch from Cobra, sending him to the ground stone cold. Ingrid and Cobra ride off on a motorbike into the sunset to Kiss singing "Can you get enough me baby I can't get enough of you."