“Couldn’t split up Kato and Nash (That’s true). Couldn’t split up Tango and Cash (That’s also true)”. So sang self-proclaimed, greatest band in the world, Tenacious D, in their song Kyle Quit The Band and you’d think that getting name checked in a song – even one that’s a blatant spoof – would mean that you’ve done something right.
However, a brief glance at the initial reviews suggests that one of the last movies of the 80s was something of a disaster as the reported friction behind the scenes and a relative revolving door of directors resulted in a finished product every bit as chaotic and muddled as the drama going on behind the camera. However, time can be ridiculously kind to critically lambasted movies from cinema’s past (especially action movies) and a new viewing of Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell’s goofy, tongue-in-cheek, homoerotic, buddy-cop blow out shows that Tango & Cash has dated so well precisely because it’s dated so badly.
Unleashing his particular brand of police work on the Westside of Los Angeles, the snappily-dressed, refined, “Armani with a badge”, Lieutenant Raymond Tango considers himself the best cop on the force, however, plying his equally unorthodox brand of upholding the law on the Eastside is the brash, mulleted, Gabriel Cash who also considers himself top cop despite the fact that the two men have never even met.
However, one thing they do have in common is that their crime fighting antics have put a noticable dent in the empire of white-suited, order barking, kingpin, Yves Perret and the criminal mastermind has the perfect – if over complicated – solution to his problems. Having Tango and Cash separately lured to the same location, Perret and his vast network of thugs, crooked lawmen and assassins have the two cops framed for murder and promptly has them sent to the worst prison imaginable that seems to only house maniacs they’ve put away over the years.
If they’re going to clear their names, Tango & Cash are going to have to put the bickering on hold for a while and – oh, no wait… no, their going to bicker even more as they first try to escape this hellhole thinly disguised as a correctional facility and then try to figure who set them up. However, after wading through a who’s who of 80s character actors in order to pin down Perret, even more friction stirs up between the two when Cash locks his eyes on Tango’s shapely dancer sister, Katherine. Can these two loose cannons quit exchanging lame puns and get on the same page to end Perret’s reign of terror? Well, an indestructible assault vehicle loaded with heavy weaponry sure should help…
Cue the explosions, gentlemen.
Apparently, the main source of contention between original director Andrei (Runaway Train) Konchalovsky and powerhouse producer Jon Peters was the tone of Tango & Cash. While Konchalovsky wanted the film to be a darker, nastier action flick that would presumably mix the buddy cop shenanigans of Lethal Weapon with the brutally extreme “policing” of Cobra, Peters instead wanted to go broad; so broad in fact he envisioned the movie being something of a spoof of action movies themselves and by the sheer amount of glib quips and bro banter, it’s obvious that Peters won.
The result is possibly the most arrogantly flippant action movie ever released that boasts all the plot complexity of an 80s arcade Beat ‘Em Up and depth of a puddle piss that’s pooled round the shoes of a beaten suspect and you could understand why hardened action fans, already pumped from such recent releases as Die Hard, Robocop and – yes – Lethal Weapon, might have found it disturbingly slight. However, if we were to switch things over to Peters’ view (not an easy thing to do if you believe Kevin Smith) and treat it all as a goofy piss take, Tango & Cash suddenly makes a lot more sense.
For a start, even for an 80s cop movie, Tango & Cash is blatantly ludicrous as it reframes actual police work as shooting up tanker trucks filled with narcotics, choking out perps with chairs, ignoring obviously helpful safety advice and bluntly refusing to recognise anything even remotely resembling due process (I don’t think either of our heroes reads anyone their rights once). But once you realise that everything that occurs from the moment the Warner Bros. shield appears on screen is one big joke, it’s easy to have a lot of fun much in the same way you’d snort out laughs while watching the violently cartoonish antics of Commando or Road House.
In fact, Tango and Cash is frequently hilarious. For a start, both our leads are so one note as characters, they might as well have “Player One” and “Player Two” hovering over their heads the entire time and they converse exclusively in awful, smug puns that are frequently so lame, it feels like both guys are in mortal denial over how uncool their banter actually is. As a result, it looks like Stallone and Russell are having a fucking ball despite the reports of on set tension so thick, it would even stop one of Tango’s hefty bullets. The former seems to genuinely be enjoying playing a smart, refined guy who wears glasses and ruminates about the stock exchange while uttering the legend, “Rambo’s a pussy!”, while Russell – effortlessly out-mulleting Mel Gibson – seems game for anything, even escaping a tight situation by dressing in drag to such God-awful effect, he makes Patrick Swayze in To Wong Foo look like Audrey Hepburn.
Elsewhere, the 80s weirdness falls upon you like warm summer rain: Terri Hatcher shows up as kidnap bait, Katherine, a club dancer who bizarrely launches into clumsy drum solos in the middle of her set; the boys spend the noisy climax driving round the most flammable quarry pit in action movie history in a vehicle straight out of Fast & Furious; a henchman somehow roars out the name of one of our heroes while he’s getting electrocuted in a prison that’s more like a Darwinian death trap than a functioning facility… it goes on, getting tirelessly ever more stupid – and yet if you refuse to take it seriously, it’s a legitimate blast.
Best of all, the supporting cast is positively groaning with shifty-looking character actors who are led by a wildly overacting Jack Palance who delivers his line with such unfettered gusto, it makes his performance in Batman seem understated by comparison. He’s joined by such familiar faces as Brion James (trying and failing to play a cockney), James Hong, Michael J. Pollard, Robert Z’Dar, Geoffrey Lewis (in the worst wig you’ve ever seen), Clint Howard, Michael Jetter and Eddie Bunker and their appearance just gives the whole thing even more of the feel of a living cartoon.
It’s big, loud and it sure is stupid (I’ve seen pebbles with a higher IQ) but taken in the right, childish, mindset, Tango & Cash’s idiocy pays out awesomely.
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