Tango & Cash (1989)

Featured Audience Ratings

• Brian D

  
  Late 80's chesse feast. Great fun all around.

• Conner R

  
  It's a completely outrageous buddy cop movie that throws its characters in the oddest places. It goes from a chaotic, futuristic prison to a monster truck derby. What makes it fun is Kurt Russel and Sly Stone being a hilarious team. You have to enjoy all the corny jokes and… More
  It's a completely outrageous buddy cop movie that throws its characters in the oddest places. It goes from a chaotic, futuristic prison to a monster truck derby. What makes it fun is Kurt Russel and Sly Stone being a hilarious team. You have to enjoy all the corny jokes and cliches because it's all in good fun. This is just a fun movie, it makes fun of itself constantly and lets you enjoy its kooky nature. It's the definition of an 80s movie and completely harmless.

• Khris N

  
  One of the special action movies of the 90's, this one is special because it reignited the buddy cop movies and had a rapid fire script with plenty of gags.... not to mention Stallone and Russell pulling it off as slick as racing flats on a wet track. Though I will say a lot of… More
  One of the special action movies of the 90's, this one is special because it reignited the buddy cop movies and had a rapid fire script with plenty of gags.... not to mention Stallone and Russell pulling it off as slick as racing flats on a wet track. Though I will say a lot of the action was recycled from my NO.1 Movie, J.C.'s Police Story, it was entertaining nonetheless, especially Kurt who I think stole the show with his wild boy antics and the drag scene. XD Anyways, Tango and Cash, two polar opposites in character, 100% identical cops, LA's Finest, gets set up by a group of drug dealers who've had enough of their successes. Copping an early plea of guilt to avoid the maximum sentence, both blue light specials find themselves in Hell, and as we all know, cops in prison is like being a snowball in Hawaii.... no chance. But of course, its Sly and Kurt here, two prime beefsteaks of the Golden Age of Action, and yeah ladies, you do get to see a lot of their backsides and such, so the movie is friendly for women. XD But the boys get a young Teri Hatcher, and boy was she the bomb back in her day. Well, now she's supposed to be a milf, but guys like to dream right? XD So, not much in direction, it did move around like a door missing a few hinges, but the script and the action was in your face and enjoyable. Even the courtroom scene was prime, Kurt surprisingly saying "eloquent" and everyone looks at him thinking "He knows how to say eloquent?".... then a few minutes later screaming out "THIS IS FUCKED UP" and getting all the cheers from the cops. The we have a modified RV assault vehicle, , monster trucks and things that go booom with spectacular results. Well.... why not? there's plenty of other ways to waste time, but this is one of the best.

• Cassie H

  
  I adore this movie. I using don't like action movies alot but I liked this one alot. I wanted to give this one a try because I love Sly and think he's awesome!!!! I also thought that Kurt Russell and Teri Hatcher's performances as well. :) I like the ending when… More
  I adore this movie. I using don't like action movies alot but I liked this one alot. I wanted to give this one a try because I love Sly and think he's awesome!!!! I also thought that Kurt Russell and Teri Hatcher's performances as well. :) I like the ending when Stallone and Russell clasp hands, because it showed that even though they had their differences they still worked well together. Very good movie.

• Roy G

  
  Stallone and Russell play well off each other, and with Palance lurking in the background, this buddy-breakout never loses its way.

• Jani H

  
  A typical 80's buddy action movie. The movie relies only on the on-screen charisma of Stallone and Russell... and that ain't much. There are some funny dialogue between them but otherwise the script(and the action) is so lame that couldn't bother to watch it for a… More
  A typical 80's buddy action movie. The movie relies only on the on-screen charisma of Stallone and Russell... and that ain't much. There are some funny dialogue between them but otherwise the script(and the action) is so lame that couldn't bother to watch it for a second time.

• Al S

  
  An awsome and wickedly hilarious buddy cop movie filled with great action and teriffic chemistry by Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russel. It stands with Leathal Weapon and 48hrs.

• Candy R

  
  Cop drama with two leading men. Good cast.

• Dean !

  
  A cool buddy-cop action film with lots of big stunts, and plenty of funny lines.

• Steve K

  
  Guilty pleasure

• Jason S

  
  Good times right here. These two were a good pairing. Fun action and a funny movie. Sly even rips on his other famous character, Rambo.

• danny d

  
  great in its day, doesnt hold up as well but still good

• xGary X

  
  Dreadful buddy cop movie in which Kurt Russell is meant to be the intelligent sensitive one...and it actually gets less believable than that. Dumb and sexist and packed with homophobic innuendo, it's so bad it's almost funny.

• Dean M

  
  The two framed cops team-up on their dangerous cat & mouse games are cool.

• Jedd Y

  
  Tango & Cash is a bizarre buddy-cop film that looks like a product of some parallel universe version of the '80s. You could be fooled into thinking that this is a run-of-the-mill, Rush Hour predecessor-type action comedy, but things very quickly take a turn for the weird. The… More
  Tango & Cash is a bizarre buddy-cop film that looks like a product of some parallel universe version of the '80s. You could be fooled into thinking that this is a run-of-the-mill, Rush Hour predecessor-type action comedy, but things very quickly take a turn for the weird. The movie is loud, silly and often makes no real-life sense whatsoever. It's very fun to watch Stallone and Russell at work, playing gleefully off each other and both showcasing disarming comic timing. However, it's often impossible to ignore the sheer ludicrousity of the plot. Thankfully, the cast knows full well and are all in on the joke, which is actually the only redeeming factor. That, and the armoured police car thingamagig the pair get to drive at the end.

• Chris B

  
  In no possible way is this a good movie, more campy than anything else, but it sure is a fun combination of two of the biggest action stars from the 80s and 90s working together to take down a crime syndicate. The film is a brainless action romp that strives to be nothing more than a… More
  In no possible way is this a good movie, more campy than anything else, but it sure is a fun combination of two of the biggest action stars from the 80s and 90s working together to take down a crime syndicate. The film is a brainless action romp that strives to be nothing more than a simple action film and does exactly that. I've seen just about everything Stallone has done and while it ranges from great and legendary films it goes down to fare like this, but in the end I just like the guy regardless. If you're looking for a rainy day action film to pass the time then give it a go.

• Deb S

  
  Tango & Cash is a movie I consider to be a classic. Ray Tango (Sylvester Stallone) and Gabe Cash (Kurt Russel) are two policemen who were sent to jail because a bitter crime boss (Jack Palance) comes up with an idea of framing our heroes and sending them to prison. Life in prison… More
  Tango & Cash is a movie I consider to be a classic. Ray Tango (Sylvester Stallone) and Gabe Cash (Kurt Russel) are two policemen who were sent to jail because a bitter crime boss (Jack Palance) comes up with an idea of framing our heroes and sending them to prison. Life in prison becomes a menace for the new prisoners after they are attacked by the drug dealer's men who want to eliminate them. After their daring jail-break, they decide to bring closure to the matter and ruthlessly pursue the man who put them behind bars in the first place.The story is good and there are some really explosive action scenes.

• Darik H

  
  There are some movies that are bad because the people making the film are incompetent, or the studio interferes with the creative intent of the film, or any number of other reasons that boil down to a miscalculation on the part of the creators. Then, there are the movies that I would… More
  There are some movies that are bad because the people making the film are incompetent, or the studio interferes with the creative intent of the film, or any number of other reasons that boil down to a miscalculation on the part of the creators. Then, there are the movies that I would swear to God were DESIGNED to be pieces of crap from their very inception- as if the director and producers thought that "bad movies" were simply another genre to be conquered, and set out to make the best one of all. Troma makes movies like that. Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer make movies like that. And waaayy back in 1989, Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell starred in a movie like that- a movie called Tango and Cash. Directed by the inimitable Andrei Konchalovsky (and come on, we all know who that is, right?), Tango and Cash is a story about two rival L.A. cops- Raymond "Ray" Tango and Gabriel "Gabe" Cash- who are both the best at their job, but are complete opposites and will have nothing to do with each other. When a diabolical gang lord arranges to take them out of the picture by framing them for drug-running and murder, however, the two unlikely pals must join forces to clear their names, first by breaking out of prison and then by shooting their way through an army of henchmen to get to the guy behind everything- all while avoiding the cops, who are after them because they're, you know, escaped convicts. Along the way, Gabe gets friendly with Ray's showgirl sister, and the two of them visit a police gadget wizard to get their hands on a monstrous S.U.V. with machine guns and a roll bar. Hilarity ensues. Is this plot sounding paper thin to you, too? Well, it should. This movie is like a perfect blend of every cliché to ever appear in a buddy cop movie- a neapolitan crap milkshake, if you will. To get a good idea of just how far off the mark this movie is, just consider the fact that for some unknowable reason, out of the two cops, they cast Sylvester Stallone as the smart one. Not to insult Stallone personally or anything, but his onscreen persona has never been terribly eloquent or intellectual, so casting him as the slick, erudite, yuppie crime-buster Tango comes off as nothing less than mind-blowingly ludicrous. To emphasize his intellect, of course, he wears glasses- this is the depth of the character work done for the film. But as a contrast to the casting of Stallone against type (okay, WAY against type), we also get Kurt Russell playing... Kurt Russell! That's right, as the street-wise, jeans-and-T-shirt, plays-by-his-own-rules Cash, Russell is as egotistical and smart-aleck-y as he is in every other movie he's in (save the "Escape" movies), and his legendary mullet is displayed in all its glory. There is one attempt at stretching Russell's predictable character a bit, though, but since it involves him in drag, I consider it more of a point against than for. I will give the filmmakers some props for featuring future Lois Lane Teri Hatcher in her first notable screen role as Ray's sister, the showgirl-slash-drummer (?) Kiki Tango (which has got to be one of the worst names in film history); the part is really just damsel-in-distress eye candy, even if they do make her an independent biker-chick masseuse (??), so it only goes so far to save the movie. The finishing blow to the film's credibility comes from the ridiculously hammy performance of Jack Palance as Yves Perret (what is with these names?), the drug kingpin who wants Tango and Cash out of the way... permanently (because apparently they are the only two cops on the entire force that do much of anything). Now, Palance was always a little over-the-top in his movies, but this is just ridiculous. He speaks in a husky whisper at all times, drawing out his "s"s and chuckling sinisterly, and in one particularly memorable scene he has two mice, which he can't resist referring to as Tango and Cash, which he's holding while he's talking about sending the real people to prison, and at the end he just has to illustrate his point by locking his two mice into a glass maze, grinning diabolically as he does it. I would actually recommend watching this movie just to see how incredibly bad and utterly hilarious this scene is. In fact, I would say that the whole movie has to be seen to be believed, from the "Tango shooting a semi-truck with a snub-nosed .38" scene that opens the film ("He thinks he's Rambo.") to the demolition-derby climax with the S.U.V. and the moment when the bad guys activate a self-destruct mechanism WHILE THEY'RE STILL IN THE BUILDING just before the big, final confrontation with the heroes. The dialogue is filled with lame jokes and banter that is just plain annoying; if there was a script, then the screenwriter ought to be ashamed (and I know he was, 'cause he only wrote two movies after this- one was a Van Damme vehicle, the other an Eddie Murphy cop movie). The music is overbearing and filled with psuedo-rock (but hey, this was the guy who did Beverly Hills Cop, so I can't fault him; I LOVE "Axel F."); the lighting is by turns too melodramatic and too plain, and more often than not is completely illogical (don't you hate those nights where the sky is just filled with bright blue light?). Tango and Cash is almost a parody of an action film, using the tried-and-true genre devices of cop films to the point of absurdity. Everything is overdone: the humor, the villainy, the action- subtlety is nowhere to be found in this film. And I can't help but wonder after watching this: did the director KNOW how bad this movie really was while he was making it? Or was he somehow convinced that he was making the next great action-comedy? Either way, if you have a couple of hours to kill, and you want to spend them watching a movie that's so bad it's funny (except for when it's TRYING to be funny, in which case it's just bad), look no further.

• RJ M

  
  In the pantheon of buddy/cop movies, this one is perhaps the most generic. It follows the formula so closely that it's almost the movie version of "Connect The Dots". The characters are as thin as tissue paper and hardly a word of dialogue feels natural. The direction… More
  In the pantheon of buddy/cop movies, this one is perhaps the most generic. It follows the formula so closely that it's almost the movie version of "Connect The Dots". The characters are as thin as tissue paper and hardly a word of dialogue feels natural. The direction is sloppy, the "writing" is practically non-existent, and the action is ham handed at best. Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell play the title heroes, and while each actor is fine in his own right, the two of them have zero chemistry together. Their "banter" is meant to inspire quick wit and cleverness, but it always seems forced. Nothing flows like how two people, especially rivals, would talk to each other. There's still a good number laughs, mainly due to Russell's skill as an actor. There's a reason Stallone never succeeded in comedies, and those reasons are vigorously on display here. Jack Palance growls and hisses his way through his role as the crime boss out to bring the hero cops down. It's a role he could play in his sleep. In fact I think he might have. Teri Hatcher, as Stallone's sister and Russell's love interest, looks hot. That's about it. This may be the only gothic looking buddy/cop movie out there. Almost every shot in this movie looks like something out of a bad fever dream. The action is so over the top that it threatens to give itself a nose bleed. From exploding gun boots, to a battle with armor plated pick up trucks and heavy construction equipment, you can't even say this movie threw in everything but the kitchen sink, because I'm sure a sink or two went flying across the screen at some point. Subtle, this movie is not. Not a lot of thought went into this movie. The success of "Lethal Weapon" sparked the typical Hollywood desire to cash in on, and try to copy, a proven success. But what this movie, and most of the "Weapon" clones failed to realize that the humor in that movie came from the characters, and the dynamics between them. It didn't come from trying to say funny lines in a situation that isn't funny. I'm sure this movie got the greenlight for the simple fact of taking two popular actors, pit them against each other, make it "clever", and blow stuff up real good. Well...3 out of 4 ain't bad, huh? I know this sounds like a supremely negative review, but it's not. I love this movie. It's late 80's cheese at it's ripest. Being the savvy professionals they are, Russell and Stallone had to know they were sitting in the middle of a turkey, so they plant their tongues firmly in their cheeks, and let it rip. No apologies. Just throw it out there, and let the chips fall where they may. The movie is also never boring. The action may be outrageously impossible, but it hardly ever stops. And did I mention Teri Hatcher is hot? This is the typical movie where you switch your brain off, and just go along for the ride. No need for deep thinking. In fact, no need for thinking of any kind. Just sit back, and take in the explosions...and Teri Hatcher's boobs.

• Dimitris S

  
  OK,how pointless this movie can be? I know, shooting people for no particular reason, betrayals and afterwards bonds for two innocent macho police officers, villains all over the place (is that a vengeance tale?) and by all means, the perfect morality in the finale only modern… More
  OK,how pointless this movie can be? I know, shooting people for no particular reason, betrayals and afterwards bonds for two innocent macho police officers, villains all over the place (is that a vengeance tale?) and by all means, the perfect morality in the finale only modern Hollywood knows how to achieve!

Read all 20 featured audience ratings