Tango & Cash (1989)

“If it isn’t Tango, it's Cash… Tango and Cash, Cash and Tango!”

So says a soused Jack Palance as the villainous Perret. Frustrated with the titular super cops separately interfering with his criminal empire, Perret decides to frame and fuck with them. That’s the entire plot. But who ARE Tango and Cash? Well Cash (Kurt Russell) is a reckless cop who plays by his own rules, but gets results. Whereas Tango (Sylvester Stallone) is a reckless cop who plays by his own rules, but gets results AND he is also a stock market whiz. One wears strategically ripped t-shirts, the other wears suits, how will these complete opposites get along?

I already know the best way to watch this movie, and it is over some drinks with your father, stepfather, or father-in-law who enjoys it more than you do. That was how I watched Tango & Cash a few years ago, with my father-in-law and his DVD copy, plus some vodka. I had fun but didn’t remember much about the movie and probably would not have returned to it, until it was selected for the Fridays of Fury Action Club’s Macho May. Second chances and reassessments are part of the fun, though! Check out upcoming movies or join here.

This 1989 movie directed by Andrei Konchalovsky* is a borderline parody of peak macho 80s action excess. It also strips away a lot of the nastiness and nihilism of the over-the-top cop movies of the era. As my wife aptly described it when the credits rolled, "That was like a really dumb comic book.” There is a little bit of blood spatter, but no chunky squibs despite some ludicrously large guns in play. The electrocution torture scene is just as Saturday-morning cartoonish as the Q-like gadget guy and his battle-truck. The movie feels like it has to try really hard to get the requisite 80s boobs in there (a couple randomly fucking in parked car during the garage chase, and the more expected back-stage boobs at a club), and our heroes are pretty much sexless outside of misinterpreted massage moaning (and maybe their shower scene together…). 

Now I say it is less nasty and nihilistic (no gruesome violence, no civilian casualties, no sex crimes), but Tango and Cash are still horrible cops and basically monsters if you look at it from any reasonable point of view. Easily 90% of their police work/”investigating” consists of physically assaulting and threatening suspects until they get a name or location. Chairs on throats, grenades in mouths, these are standard procedures for T & C (Music Factory). The fact that it is always effective and barely questioned is still insidious in its implications, but unlike so many other movies it doesn’t bother to stack the deck against our heroes or make it seem like this is their only choice. The plot and world-building of this movie are so thin that it doesn’t take the time or effort to portray the usual boogeymen of bureaucracy, human rights, or the legal system as getting in T & C’s way, it just seems like they are dumb and impatient. It also doesn’t bother to give them any personal stakes. There are no dead friends, relatives, or random victims they have to seek justice for, and they don’t know who the main villain Perret is at all until the climax. They don’t even know Perret has Tango’s sister (the only woman and non-cop/criminal character in the movie) as a hostage until they are in the room with him. Tango is rich and explicitly says he only does police work for the excitement. When they get in trouble and end up in jail, it's not for any of the shit they actually do, it's a lazy frame job that other cops buy into instead of investigating.

I don’t think the writers* even considered any of this beyond the surface level, the script is just imitating other cop movie cliches, and coming up with another over-the-top interrogation scene is easier than writing actual clues or investigations. The good guys’ main motivation is kicking ass, and anything they do is good because they are the good guys, end of thought. This a script removed of almost all connective tissue like character beats, down time scenes, or relationships (outside of a minute between Tango and his sister to set her up for later). Hell, even entire plot beats are delivered via newspaper headlines! My god, so many newspaper headlines it became hilarious. Tango and Cash are already frequently front page news before their trial apparently gets as much coverage as OJ Simpson’s. It feels like it is just hurrying as quickly as possible to the next action set piece.

Those action set pieces are big and loud, but not particularly exciting. Tango’s opening scene with the semi-truck is fun but brief (and copped from Jackie Chan’s Police Story, obligatory mention). Cash’s opening is a lot more promising, with stunt jumps and smashing cars, and I liked the truck driving through the overhead lights in the garage. Unfortunately, that was the highpoint of the movie’s action for me. The prison escape is at least amusing because it continues the entire prison sequence’s insanely over the top production design, the whole thing feels somewhere between a nightmare and a video game:

The climax has a weaponized battle-truck causing many car crashes and explosions, but between camera angles and editing it never feels as epic or fun as it should. The brief fight in the prison’s industrial laundry area was ok, but otherwise there is not much in the way of extended fisticuffs, and there are shootings, not shootouts.

I have never been much of a Sly guy, but he is fine here. I am usually much more excited to see Russell tussle, but he gets even less character business. Apart from one line mentioning alimony, Cash is more haircut than character. But oh, what a haircut! Russell’s hair is at the height of its powers (and literal height) here, and it's the only thing bigger than the huge pistol with an absurd laser sight he lugs around (seriously, that rig has got to weigh more than the gun itself).

such volume, such bounce!

The supporting cast brings much of the color and energy to the picture. You have Jack Palance chewing scenery and rubbing mice on his face, Brion James doing a terrible Cockney accent, Robert Z’Dar (Hellhole) setting up the movie’s best line (“You broke THAT jaw?”), and James Hong is… there (until he gets killed via a stunt double who is so much visibly younger it took me a second to register it was supposed to be him).

Mice On - apply directly to forehead

hey, its that guys!

Geoffry Lewis returns from last week’s Joshua Tree, playing another boss cop perfunctory to the plot (although he has a terrible hairpiece this time!).

Teri Hatcher as Tango’s sister is possibly the only female speaking role in the movie? Definitely the only woman who is a named character (her name is Tango’s Sister). That means she gets to dance around in a sparkly bra and play drums for 20 seconds (what the hell kind of club was that anyway?), make moaning noises that are misinterpreted as sex, and have her brother and someone she just met fight over which one of them gets to decide what she does with her vagina. Between that cast and the relentless pace and ridiculousness, the movie gets part way to being the dumb fun it wants to be despite the frequently overblown yet lackluster action.

*The threadbare plotting and goofy tone of the film make a lot more sense after I read about the film’s troubled production. Original director Konchalovsky was fired nearly 3 months into shooting over disputes with producer Jon Peters and budget issues (or he was fired by Stallone, or because of Stallone, according to some). Producer and second unit director Peter Macdonald took over (something he did on Rambo III after Stallone had director Russell Mulcahy fired, hmm…) until they hired Albert Magnoli to film the (anti-)climactic action scenes. The admittedly cool opening was also done by Magnoli during reshoots. It took until a week into filming to find the movie’s third and final cinematographer (Stallone’s guy, natch). The script is credited to Randy Felton, but was being re-written by multiple people throughout shooting (including Stallone). Stallone and producer Jon Peters argued about the overall tone and the ending, with Stallone wanting the movie to be more serious. It seems like Peter’s campier take mostly won out, although he can’t have gotten everything he wanted because there are no giant spiders in this. Considering the complete lack of other characterization for our heroes, I have to imagine the stock genius thing was a Stallone choice because he was tired of people thinking he was just a meathead based on his usual roles.

What I really wonder, though, is if at any point someone involved was intentionally writing Tango as gay. Trust me, I know it is not particularly fresh or clever to point out the many homoerotic elements in action movies, especially macho 80s action movies, but this is something else. The shower scene is the most obvious example in this movie, and possibly one of the most obvious in the whole genre, but it is also a constant in most of Tango’s insults and one-liners (and poking Cash’s crotch with his gun). Every comeback is dripping with innuendo (phrasing!), starting with Z’Dar’s “Fuck you!” being answered with “I prefer blondes” and just never stopping after that. He jokingly refers to his cellmate Clint Howard (oh yeah Clint Howard’s in this) as his fiance. The only character details explicitly mentioned about him are that he does police work for the excitement because he is a rich stockbroker with no wife (past or present), which also supposedly explains why he dresses in dapper suits, but I feel like there are probably plenty of stock guys who look like shit? His only relationship is with his sister. I am sure it never would have been explicitly stated by the movie or writer in a 1989 big budget action flick, but I wonder. The alternative explanation is that between Sly and all the other guys trying to cobble together a movie as they went, a quick and easy go-to was “wouldn’t it be inherently hilarious if this macho guy implied that he himself and possibly, but not always, the other person was gay?” Then they did that a dozen times and called it a day. Ah shit, it's probably that one. 

Check out other FOF Club members’ reviews here. https://letterboxd.com/tag/fofac-80/reviews/

If you actually read all the way to the end, here are gratuitous pictures of Teri Hatcher in a sparkly bra as a thank you: