Tango & Cash is a 1989 American buddy cop action comedy film starring Sylvester Stallone, Kurt Russell, Jack Palance, and Teri Hatcher. The film follows Raymond Tango and Gabriel Cash, the titular pair of rival police detectives, who are forced to work together after a criminal mastermind frames them for murder.

The film was chiefly directed by Andrei Konchalovsky, with Albert Magnoli and Peter MacDonald taking over in the later stages of filming, with Stuart Baird overseeing postproduction. The multiple directors were due to a long and troubled production process, which included numerous script rewrites and clashes between Konchalovsky and producer Jon Peters over creative differences.

Tango & Cash was released by Warner Bros. in the United States on December 22, 1989, the same day as Always. The film received mixed reviews from critics, but was a box-office success, earning over $120 million on a $54 million budget.

Plot

In Los Angeles, Lieutenants Raymond Tango of the Westside and Gabriel Cash of the Eastside are considered the best detectives in the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), where they are both assigned to the Narcotics Division and lauded for numerous successful and daring drug busts across Greater Los Angeles. They are opposites in almost every way and are intense rivals, each considering himself to be better, despite having never met.

Unbeknownst to Tango and Cash, their intercepted drug shipments belong to a criminal organization headed by Yves Perret. Frustrated, Perret and his associates plan their revenge against the detectives, but refrain from killing them as to not turn them into martyrs. Instead, Perret devises an elaborate scheme to ruin their lives - frame them for murder.

Tango and Cash are separately informed of a drug deal, where they meet each other for the first time. The pair discovers the wiretapped corpse of an undercover FBI agent; suddenly, additional FBI agents led by Agent Wyler arrive to arrest them for murder. Wyler finds Cash's backup pistol near the body, and at trial, an audio tape ostensibly recording the pair shooting the agent after discussing a drug purchase is used against them, verified by audio expert Skinner. With the evidence stacked against them, Tango and Cash plead no contest to a lesser charge in exchange for reduced sentences in a minimum-security prison, but they are held in a maximum-security prison alongside several criminals they had arrested previously.

Once in prison, Tango and Cash are roused from their beds and tortured by Perret's henchman Requin and a gang of inmates, until Matt Sokowski, the assistant warden and Cash's former commanding officer, rescues them. Sokowski recommends they escape and provides them with a plan, but Tango opts out. When Cash tries to escape, he finds Sokowski murdered and is pursued by the guards before being rescued by Tango. Reaching the roof, Cash ziplines outside the prison walls, but Tango is attacked by an inmate before he can follow, and defeats him by knocking him into a transformer. To clear their names, they separate; Tango tells Cash that if he needs to contact him, he can go to the Cleopatra Club and ask for "Katherine".

The detectives visit the witnesses who framed them in court; Tango intercepts Wyler, who admits that Requin was in charge of the setup and is killed shortly after by a car bomb; Cash discovers that Skinner made the incriminating tape himself. At the Cleopatra Club, Cash finds Katherine—Tango's sister who goes by the name of Kiki—and when police arrive at the club, she helps Cash escape by dressing him as a woman. Later that night, Tango reunites with Cash and the duo are met at Kiki's house by Tango's commanding officer. He gives them Requin's address and tells them they have 24 hours to find out for whom he works; Tango and Cash apprehend Requin and interrogate him, and trick him into giving up Perret's name using a dummy grenade.

Cash's friend, weapons expert Owen, lends the pair an armed RV, which they use to storm Perret's hideout and defeat his pursuing guards, and Requin is killed when Cash uses a real grenade. However, Perret has Kiki kidnapped and starts a timer to trigger his hideout's self-destruct. He appears in a hall of mirrors holding Kiki at gunpoint. Both detectives pick out the correct Perret and shoot him in the head. They rescue Kiki and barely escape as the hideout explodes. Now able to get along, Tango and Cash joke half seriously about Cash's desire to date Kiki as a newspaper headline announces they have been cleared of all charges and returned to LAPD duty as heroes.

Cast

<!--- Cast and order per closing tombstone credits, roles per closing credits scroll, add Skinner character-key to a plot development --->

  • Sylvester Stallone is Lieutenant Raymond "Ray" Tango, the best cop in West Los Angeles. A slick, refined detective who trades stocks on the side, Tango wears three-piece Armani suits, drives a Cadillac Allanté, carries a Smith & Wesson Model 36 as his sidearm, and lives in a middle-class house with his sister.
  • Kurt Russell is Lieutenant Gabriel "Gabe" Cash, the best cop in East Los Angeles. A stereotypical "cowboy cop" with an interest in weaponry, Cash wears tattered clothes and cowboy boots with built-in shotguns, drives a Chevrolet Corvette, carries a Ruger GP100 with an experimental laser sight as his sidearm, and lives in a bachelor pad apartment in a run-down neighborhood.
  • Jack Palance is Yves Perret, crime lord of Southern California, who arranges for Tango and Cash to be framed for murder.
  • Teri Hatcher is Katherine "Kiki" Tango, a club dancer and Tango's younger sister, who rents a room in his house.
  • Michael J. Pollard is Owen, Cash's weapon-engineer friend who provides him with his firearms, shotgun boots, and later the armored RV.
  • Brion James is Requin, Perret's ponytailed cockney henchman and courier.
  • James Hong is Quan, the Los Angeles Triad leader and associate of Perret's.
  • Robert Z'Dar is "Face", a psychotic convict who has a particular grudge against Tango for breaking "his ribs, his leg, and his jaw".
  • Marc Alaimo is Lopez, a Mexican cartel boss and associate of Perret's.
  • Roy Brocksmith is FBI Agent Davis.
  • Phil Rubenstein is Matt Sokowski, the assistant warden when Tango and Cash are in prison.
  • Lewis Arquette is FBI Agent Wyler.
  • Clint Howard is "Slinky", Tango's mental-patient cellmate in prison.
  • Michael Jeter is Skinner, a sound engineer paid to implicate Tango and Cash.
  • Edward Bunker is Captain Holmes, Cash's commanding officer.
  • Geoffrey Lewis is Captain Schroeder, Tango's commanding officer (uncredited).

Production

Development and writing

The film was known as The Set Up and was based on a script by Randy Feldman, which was based on an idea by Jon Peters and Peter Guber. Sylvester Stallone and Patrick Swayze were signed to star. In March 1989 Andrei Konchalovsky signed to direct. After Swayze dropped out and went on to star in Road House, he was replaced by Kurt Russell.

The original director of photography, Donald Peterman, left the production after four months, including a month of preproduction; his replacement, Barry Sonnenfeld, was fired by Stallone after only one week's work on the film.

Pre-production

After nearly three months of filming, director Konchalovsky was fired by producer Peters in a dispute over the movie's ending. In his 1999 memoir, Elevating Deception, Konchalovsky said that the reason he was fired was because Stallone and he wanted to give the film a more serious tone and make it more realistic than the producers wanted, especially Peters, who kept pushing for the film to be goofier and campier, and as such, his relationship with Peters became untenable. Another reason why Konchalovsky was fired was his refusal to agree to what he referred to as the "increasingly insane" demands that Peters had. Konchalovsky said that he was initially hired to make a buddy cop movie with plenty of humor, but Peters basically wanted to turn it into a spoof, without any semblance of seriousness, and Konchalovsky refused. Konchalovsky was replaced with Albert Magnoli, who filmed all the chase and fight scenes in the ending. The film went into production on June 12, 1989,

Behind-the-scenes problems (including filming, script changes, and later constant cuts and re-editing of the movie) were so big and so bad that one of the more experienced crew members said in an interview: "This was the worst-organized, most poorly prepared film I've ever been on in my life. From the first day we started, no one knew what the hell anyone was doing." This same crew member also mentioned some reasons why director Konchalovsky was fired; "He found himself in over his head. There were scenes scheduled for three days that were so complicated they should have been scheduled for six or seven days. They were trying to do a 22-week movie in 11 weeks."

The film ultimately missed its budget by over $20 million and had to be completely re-edited by editor Stuart Baird prior to its theatrical release. Tango & Cash was one of many films to be turned over to Baird, who came onto projects as an editing "doctor" when studios such as Warner Bros. were displeased with the first cut (in this case, second, third, ...) turned in by the filmmakers. Baird was also called in by Warner Bros. to re-edit another Stallone action movie, Demolition Man (1993), for the same reasons. Speaking on both Konchalovsky and Magnoli, Stallone also said:

<blockquote>Andrei was a real gentleman and I thought his take on Tango and Cash was very good and would've been infinitely more realistic had he been allowed to continue. His replacement was more attuned to comic pop culture so the film had a dramatic shift into a more light-hearted direction.</blockquote>

Music

A soundtrack was never released, as the songs were already released on the artists' albums. The film score, which was composed by Harold Faltermeyer, was released for the first time on January 30, 2007, by La-La Land Records (LLLCD 1052) in 3000 Limited Sets.

Songs

  • "Best of What I Got" – Bad English
  • "Let the Day Begin" – The Call
  • "Don't Go" – Yazoo
  • "Poison" – Alice Cooper
  • "It's No Crime" – Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds
  • "Harlem Nocturne" – Darktown Strutters

Reception

Box office

The film opened on December 22, 1989, and during its opening weekend, the movie grossed $6.6&nbsp;million from 1,409 theaters, averaging $4,704 per theater, and ranking number two at the box office. The film saw its $54&nbsp;million production budget return box-office receipts of $120.4&nbsp;million. The film also sold well on VHS.

Critical response

Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.

The New York Times criticized the plot, the screenplay, and the acting. Michael Wilmington of the Los Angeles Times called it "a waste of talent and energy on all levels", criticizing the film as both illogical and predictable. Dave Kehr of the Chicago Tribune wrote that one interpretation of the film is "a crafty foreigner's sly parody of the current state of American culture".

Accolades

Tango & Cash was nominated for three Golden Raspberry Awards for Worst Actor (Stallone for this film and Lock Up), Worst Supporting Actress (Russell in drag), and Worst Screenplay at the 10th Golden Raspberry Awards.

Potential sequel

In September 2019, Stallone revealed that he had a story prepared for a potential sequel and was trying to convince Russell to sign onto the project. However, while Stallone was excited to film a sequel, Russell was unsure if he wanted to, saying that by then they were in their "unprime". As of 2025, no further news has materialized on the sequel.

References

  • The Life and Art of Vern Article; June 21, 2009