Tango & Cash

We're all familiar with the 'Buddy Cop' movie: 2 mismatched police officers are teamed up to fight crime. They don't get along, have conflicting techniques, constantly bicker, but by the end they set aside their differences, become friends, and bust the bad guys. Cop Out, The Other Guys, Hot Fuzz, Lethal Weapon, Seven, Rush Hour, Point Break etc etc. It's probably the most cliched genre in movie history. Well today, as you may have guessed, I'm going to look at a buddy cop movie, one of my favourites in fact: 1989's Tango & Cash.

Directed by Andrei Konchalovsky and starring Sylvester Stallone, Kurt Russell, Jack Palace and Teri Hatcher, Tango & Cash tells the story of... well, do I really need to explain what the gist of it is? I already stated in the first paragraph what path these movies always follow, and this one pretty much does it to the letter.

The movie opens with a well dressed, by-the-book cop called Ray Tango (Stallone), intercepting a tanker full to the brim with cocaine. Meanwhile, scruffy, play-by-his-own-rules cop Gabriel Cash (Russell) narrowly avoids being killed by a gun man at his apartment, and chases the assailant down, capturing and bringing him to the Police Station, where he coerces the gunman into telling him about a drug deal taking place that evening.

By a happy little coincidence, Tango also finds out about the deal, and the 2 converge in, are you ready for this, an abandoned building; where the 2 discover a dead body with recording equipment strapped to him, and Cash's gun on the floor. FBI agents storm the place at that moment, and arrest both men, who, as it turns out, have been framed for murder by a crime lord called Yves Purret (Palance), who is tired of them interfering in his nefarious schemes.

So through a collection of doctored evidence and suspect witnesses, Tango & Cash wind up in a prison that would make Alcatraz look like the Hilton, where Purret's goons make their lives inside a misery. But the duo escape, and with the help of Tango's sister Kiki (Hatcher) they set about unravelling the conspiracy that landed them in the slammer.

So there it is, Tango & Cash, not original, not groundbreaking, but in my opinion, still very enjoyable. While it certainly doesn't do anything new, it still delivers with what it has. I can't remember the last time I seen a movie that was so constantly watchable. I don't think it has even a single dull or uninteresting moment. The writing, while silly and over the top, has some really great jokes, and Stallone & Russell work off each other pretty well. The back-and-forthing between the 2 leads is what makes it enjoyable. Nothing much else to say really. The concept, story and characters are as old as time itself, but if your just there for the jokes, I still think you'll enjoy it.