George P. Cosmatos
Cosmatos had two careers, and the second one paid considerably better. A Greek-Italian director and screenwriter who lived from 1941 to 2005, he began at home with dramas, including Massacre in Rome with Richard Burton, and appeared on screen himself as a boy in Zorba the Greek in 1964, credited as Acne Faced Boy.
The pivot was toward scale. The Cassandra Crossing and Escape to Athena were British-Italian co-productions stuffed with international stars, and they established what he was actually good at: moving very large amounts of hardware and cast through a plot without letting the audience lose the thread. He relocated to North America and made the tight, mean creature feature Of Unknown Origin in 1983.
Then the run everybody remembers. Rambo: First Blood Part II and Cobra are the two loudest films of the mid-1980s American action cycle, and Leviathan is a wet, gloomy monster picture in the wake of a better one. He was never an auteur, and his best pictures are the ones with a strong star and a clean genre engine underneath them.
That best one is Tombstone in 1993, a western that has outlived nearly everything else in his filmography, sustained by a great ensemble and by scenes that give actors room. It is the film that makes the case for him.
Movies (9)
Where to start with George P. Cosmatos
One film matters more than the rest, and it is not close. Tombstone is overstuffed and unevenly plotted, and none of that matters, because the performances are having a wonderful time and the movie is generous enough to let them.
Rambo: First Blood Part II is the historically important one, a film that fixed an entire decade's idea of what an action sequel looks like, and Cobra is its meaner, sillier cousin. Of Unknown Origin is the genuine sleeper here, a lean, claustrophobic horror picture that gets remarkable mileage out of a very small idea. The Cassandra Crossing is seventies disaster cinema with a cast list you will not believe, Escape to Athena is the same formula at half strength, and Leviathan is for people who cannot get enough underwater monsters. Zorba the Greek has him on screen as a boy.