With a career in film and television spanning more than 40 years, Cohen has distinguished himself as a celebrated Screenwriter, Producer and Director. In 1973, 20th Century Fox Television hired Cohen as ‘Head of Current Programming’ helping out with, among other shows, the first year of the epic hit, M*A*S*H. Eager to push Fox into ‘long form’, Cohen cold called the head of ABC and introduced himself as ‘the head of television movies at Fox’. Barry Diller gave him a meeting where he sold two TV films on the spot, properties he had found in the voluminous books of Fox's unproduced properties. A week later, he duplicated the feat at CBS under Philip Barry. Fox President, william Edwin Self, was not happy that a junior employee had garnered these commitments without permission but grudgingly gave Cohen the title Vice President of TV Movies.

Cohen went to work and developed the first Motown movie from his own idea about the burgeoning phenomenon of African American Super Models he felt was perfect for Motown star Diana Ross. He sold the package to Paramount and in 1974, the cameras rolled on Mahogany in Chicago and Rome. At the same time, he developed a unique film from the Bill Brashler novel The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings (1976) starring Billy Dee Williams, James Earl Jones and Richard Pryor. To direct, he hired a then unknown TV Director John Badham to make his feature debut, a critical hit set in the 1930s Negro National League (1920–31) (twenty years later, he and Badham would partner again to make a number of successful films at Universal Studios).

Departing Motown in 1978, Cohen went on to produce and direct films and television series, including Miami Vice, Light of Day, The Witches of Eastwick, Ironweed, and The Wiz.

From 1990 onwards, Cohen moved into directing full-time. Much success followed with early 1990s films such as Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, Dragonheart, Daylight and the Golden Globe award-winning film The Rat Pack (film).

At 52, Cohen had become an action Director, directing the 2001 film, The Fast and The Furious. The film was a hit, opening with $40 million its first weekend, starring relative unknowns Paul Walker and Vin Diesel.

In 2008, he directed the third installment of The Mummy, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, grossing $405 million worldwide, and he directed Blumhouse Production's The Boy Next Door starring Jennifer Lopez in 2015.

Cohen was born in Cornwall, New York. He attended Harvard University and graduated magna cum laude in the class of ’71, after transferring from Amherst College after two years concentrating in a cross major between anthropology and visual studies. His first endeavor in filmmaking was a commissioned recruiting film for Harvard's Admissions Office in 1970, which became his senior thesis.