#4: TANGO & CASH (1989)

Two of L.A.'s top rival cops are going to have to work together...even if it kills them!

Lieutenants Ray Tango and Gabriel Cash are the two toppest cops in Los Angeles, which means they are polar opposites who despise each other. Tango is a clean-cut, suave, suit-wearing, stockmarket-playing Playboy type while Cash is a slob who grabs passing pizza without prejudice and wears $9 shirts (which means he's the fun one). Despising both of them equally is Yves Perret, crime lord and drug dealer, who loses millions of dollars from each illegal operation that Tango or Cash bust. Claiming that killing them would be to simply create ten more cops like them, Perret instead deduces that the best way to defeat Tango and Cash is, first, with dishonorm—by framing them for murder and police corruption—and then disposing of them forever—by sending them away to a prison that's populated by the felons and degenerates the cops have spent their entire careers putting away. With Perret and his minions able to infiltrate the corrupt prison at their convenience to whisk the cops away from their cells for nightly torture sessions, Tango and Cash know their next bed check might be their last, so they make plans to escape. After a daring prison break, the two at-odds cops have little choice but to team up, work together, and follow the trail of slimeballs to the head crime kingpin. Along the way, their differing personalities and philosophies will earn big belly laughs as they unleash upon each other unyielding waves of wisecracks, insults, penis-related defamation, and homoerotic bantering, but also while taking the lives of dozens of men, obtaining justice from those who soiled their names, and committing the most epic of high-fives.

Tango & Cash, man-go and smash! Downtown Clown vs. Beverly Hills Wop! This piece of genius was the best farewell to '80s action that anyone without the surname "God" could have created. Directed in 1989 by Andrey Konchalovskiy (Runaway Train), who was fired toward the end of shooting and replaced by Albert Magnoli (Purple Rain), who saw more eye-to-eye with the studio that wanted the film to be lighter, and starring two of the greatest names in actiondom, Tango & Cash was destined to be a balls-to-the-wall, pun-douched, gun-toting, Clint Howard-having good time. Tango & Cash marched into the room, looked all the other buddy cop movies in the face, pushed up their sleeves, and left them all FUBAR, big time. Written by Randy Feldman (Van Damme's Nowhere to Run), Tango & Cash is, once again, one of those rare instances in which all kinds of behind-the-scenes drama could very well have handicapped the film right out of the gate, but even after the original Cash dropped out to star in Road  House, and the script was rewritten numerous times during production, and the producer fired the original director, and four—count'em, four—different men directed portions of the film, and Stallone fired original director of photography Barry Sonnenfeld, nothing could stop this rollicking piece of ridiculousness. The gods of fate and the hands of time worked together massaging the balance to ensure the path for Tango & Cash remained unfettered, unobstructed, and oh yeah, unprecedented. Tango and Cash, Cash and Tango. Let's do it! (Drumbeat.)

When one asks the question, "Remember when action films were allowed to be fun?", this is the title that should pop into your brain. Because that's Tango & Cash: fun. It's fun in cinematic form. And it's not just fun, but it emits fun; it breeds fun. Like the Terminator itself, that's what it does. That's ALL IT DOES. Tango & Cash wants only to entertain. There's no social commentary going on, no lessons to learn, no hyperbolic dangers that could one day manifest in the real world. But that's cool, because not every action romp needs such weighty ideas. Demolition Man attempted to masquerade every so often as satire, but it, too, preferred to focus on John Spartan and Simon Phoenix trying to murder-death-kill each other. Death Wish 3 had even less to say beyond "stand up for yourself!" (kind of), but was actually just an excuse for Paul Kersey to forcefully remove teeth from the mouths of punks with wooden boards. Tango & Cash not only has nothing of merit to say, it doesn't even know how to speak—unless, of course, it's when our leads are either mercilessly mocking each other in every possible sense—appearance, masculinity (or lack thereof), member proportions, rationale, intelligence—or if one of them is fucking the other's sister.

But it's all okay, people. Tango & Cash is perfect as it is—warts, gratuitous breasts, and all. It's a loud, brash, politically incorrect, violent work of art that can be summed up in three simple words: dick-measuring contest.

Let's enhance that.

The scene in which our heroes share a prison shower scene and make snide remarks about the other's dick size, on its surface, may just seem like something two arrogant, constantly competing guys would probably do. But in reality, all of Tango & Cash is one big dick-measuring contest. If Tango's going to psyche out a couple of drug dealers speeding at him in a fast-moving tanker truck by firing shots into their windshield while standing directly in the path of the truck, then Cash is going to giggle uproariously at the headlines in the newspaper about his latest drug bust before taking several shots to his bullet-proof vested chest and pursuing the would-be assassin till he gets his man.

And later, in court and upon their arraignment for the bogus charges against them, Tango stands up and says:

Your Honor, I have been a policeman for twelve years, and I think it's the best organization in the country. At times, I've been accused of being too aggressive at taking criminals off the streets. Well, if that's a sin, then I guess I'm guilty. All the cops I've worked with are good cops. You are...doing a tough job. And I only hope that the outcome of this trial is such, that the whole department is not judged by what has transpired here. Thank you.

To which Cash adds, while addressing the court:

This whole thing FUCKING SUCKS!

The fact that these characters are constantly trying to upstage each other, either directly or omnisciently, pretty much sums up the dynamic they'll maintain throughout, regardless of the notion that their relationship systematically progresses from enemies to frenemies. Even as they walk down Rape Alley in their new prison home, they can hardly curb their impulse to out-joke each other. And as cell after cell of prisoners bellow horribly the rape Tango and Cash will endure ("I'm gonna put brown sugar in your ass!" screams a black inmate), Cash eyes all the burning debris and remarks that he's forgotten to bring the marshmallows. Framed for murder? Threats of rape? None of it matters—just know that X is funnier.

The buddy cop movie has been a big go-to in the genre for going on decades now, and it remains a popular gimmick even today. Filmmaker Walter Hill has rocked this concept no less than four times, with increasingly diminishing results. Taking it back to an overall sense, there's Riggs and Murtaugh of Lethal Weapon, Cates and Hammond of 48 Hours, McClane and Carver of Die Hard with a Vengeance, Lockhart and "Gay" Perry of Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, and to get really abstract, Vincent and Max in Collateral—all are not just examples of the buddy cop formula, but also arguably among the best action/thriller offerings in general. This idea of pairing up at-odds characters and forcing them into situations where they have no choice but to depend on the other is a concept consistently ripe for exploration. While this formula doesn't always work (let's throw out Showdown in Little Tokyo and Red Heat as examples), every so often two actors are paired together resulting in not just believable and infectious chemistry, but an unforgiving good time. Tango & Cash makes for the best. Anyone who says differently will have their tongue ripped out. With a tow truck.

Tango & Cash sports some of the best character actors working today (though some are no longer with us). Among the standouts are big-faced thespian Robert Z'Dar as...um, "Face." He likely looks familiar to fans of the Maniac Cop trilogy, as he played the titular role in those shockingly successful horror films scattered throughout the '80s and '90s. "Face" has the honor of presenting the first on-screen villain for Ray Tango, and in typical high-watermark-level action films, he's left emasculated and humiliated after crossing his path—not once, not twice, but thrice! After he eventually returns as a sort of secondary henchman, doing battle with Stallone on a rain-drenched rooftop, he offers a much more intimidating villain than the many others against which Stallone would fight later on in his career (like Eric Roberts).

Leveling out the good guys is Geoffrey Lewis, who plays Captain Schroeder and delivers one of the best/worst puns in the entire film. ("Is this how you screen all your guests?") Lewis happily plays the characteristic superior who seems as proud as he is annoyed with his progeny of sorts. In addition to his awesome/terrible dialogue mentioned above, Lewis, in one silent second of screen time, perfectly encapsulates the film-established dynamic between superior and subject that often played out in the genre during this era: that of the tough but lovable captain overseeing the unorthodox but admittedly effective methods of his Dennis-the-Menace-like underling. In the film's opener in which Tango haphazardly fires a bullet into a gasoline tanker to prove that it's not filled with gasoline, but cocaine, Captain Schroeder spreads his suit jacket to place his hands on his hips, cocks his head, and looks adoringly/tskingly at Tango, his facial expression alone nearly screaming, "Could I love this knucklehead more?" It's perfect.

This list of "hey, him!" easily continues with Michael J. Pollard (Scrooged), Brion James (Blade Runner), Eddie Bunker (Mr. Blue from Reservoir Dogs as well as real-life career criminal), James Hong (Big Trouble in Little China), Michael Jeter (The Green Mile), and the imitable Clint Howard (everything, plus Seinfeld).

THE GOOD GUYS

Ray Tango. Alias Captain Fantastic. Taurus. Westside. Second best cop in Los Angeles. Peewee. Part-time stockbroker. Rambo belittler. Snow maker. Cocaine licker. Guest screener. Sister enabler. Cock blocker. Candidate for the Psycho Hall of Fame.

Rolling out the red carpet for this action icon, Stallone returns to Top Ten Murdered Men after his #8 appearance in Demolition Man.

Stallone starred in thirteen films during the 1980s, and if we scrape away all the franchise stuff and just focus on his one-offs, that cuts the number down to seven. If we cut that number down to the ones worth a damn, we get three. And if we need one bonafide-fucking-classic, we get Tango & Cash. Stallone would later go on record as saying that all of his Rocky and Rambo sequels (minus Rocky Balboa and 2008's Rambo) were nothing more than vanity projects—an excuse for him to exploit popular characters, rule the box office, and show off his impressive physique. Between that, and the fact that his non-franchise picks of the '80s had him playing downtrodden characters in shitty or slimy situations, Tango & Cash was the only flick in that ten-year stretch that let him have any fun. And that might be why his turn as Ray Tango results in such jocularity despite Stallone's usual misgivings about playing such a goofball. An evaluation of Stallone's action career results in a bevy of films in which humor or irony wasn't an aspect on which he relied, and that kind of attraction toward the dark continues for him even today. The Expendables aside (which do get lighter as they progress), Stallone has always been drawn to dark and moody characters. His John Rambo does a complete 360 over the course of the First Blood series, going from haunted, to haunted/pissed, to patriotic/cartoonish, and back to haunted again. Assassins, or Bullet to the Head, or his remake of Get Carter present characters with a depressing past who wouldn't know a humor joke if it cupped the balls and stroked the shaft—and that's what Stallone likes (heh heh heh). Even in Grudge Match, a send-up of his cinematic history as boxer Rocky Balboa and among the broadest comedies he's ever done, he mostly opted to remain stoic and still while his co-star, Robert De Niro, chewed every piece of scenery and mugged for every camera. There's something about the comedy genre that Stallone doesn't quite "get," and this is likely why, looking back, his contributions to the comedy world are very few, very far between, and most of them lousy. (Simply said: Oscar.)

Having said that, Stallone's take on Ray Tango isn't so much a mixed bag as it is an occasionally uneven approach to a character. While that could be due to Stallone's discomfort within the confines of the comedy genre, it more has to do with how his performance ultimately compares to the character of...

Gabriel Cash. Alias Queen for a Day. Leo. Eastside. Second best cop in Los Angeles. Mini Mouse. Pizza lover. Pompadour rocker. Cross dresser. Tango impressionist. English-language instructor. Alimony dater. Willing cuckolder.

Kurt Russell. Just say his name. Let it caress your tongue like a fine lager. Not enough? Snake Plissken. Wyatt Earp. R.J. MacCready. The guy from Overboard. Jack Fucking Burton. The guy who should've done Road House, but didn't, because the natural order knew that the cosmos could never survive the repercussions and relentless sonic booms from something that awesome.

Kurt Russell is Hollywood royalty. His CV is not just solid, but filled with characters that have since become iconic, and films that have since been blessed with that feared word: "classic." Though he deserves to go down in action history based on that alone (and he likely will), the one main thing lacking in his career is the fact that, beyond the Escape films he did with John Carpenter, he was always part of an ensemble. He never obtained his one-man army title or franchise that saw him strapping on the camouflage and taking to the ______ to rescue _____. He never had his scene where he slid on the cannon-sized firearm primarily used for decimating tiny armies of people and using it against the mercenaries or the leather-clad bikers or the street punks who'd shat upon him their ultimately self-destructive supreme disrespect. Sure, Snake Plissken went on all kinds of solo missions, but always ended up with a collection of weirdos, misfits, and wormy guys by his side. Russell never achieved that godlike lone-gunman status, and never reveled in the excess of the 1980s. Simply put, he never had his one solo action outing that grew to such ridiculous proportions that years later it would be looked back on with equal helpings ironic and genuine love. That's not at all to talk down on his filmography—the fact alone that he was in The Thing is cooler than anything else legitimate the more typical action icons have ever done (yeah, more than First Blood, more than The Terminator)—but at times it feels like Russell walked away from a meeting or shredded a script that could have delivered unto us that kind of brainless, bloodied bout of orgiastic carnage and destruction to which most of our typical action guys can claim. (He also turned down Stallone's offer to appear in The Expendables, claiming his desire to focus less on ensemble work, but considering he joined an even bigger ensemble in Furious 7, that was likely just polite Russell speak for "this script is really shitty.") However, let's not forget his moment in Tombstone during which he blows away Powers Booth while charging across a river, completely unconcerned with the bullets whizzing by his head, bellowing "NO!" over and over again, because he is just that pissed off. Try for the rest of your life: you will never do anything as manly.

In Tango & Cash, Russell feels right at home. Channeling Jack Burton, one of his most celebrated characters, and with a comparably unending supply of yuck-yucks, his Gabriel Cash is the man you want to invite to every party. He's a poor slob, kind of a loser outside of his cop job, and he's cool with it. Though Tango shares equal screen time with Cash, and though Stallone shares equal billing with Russell, in many ways this feels more like a Cash film than a Tango film. Though Tango sheds his primped and proper Playboy look pretty early on, and there's no kind of attempt to maintain his type-A personality for the remaining iteration of the character, leaving him with the same rough-and-tough cocky exterior as his counterpart, Stallone never feels 100% confident uttering some of the cornier dialogue or some of the more groan-inducing puns. Russell, however, nails it—the dialogue, the mood, the tone, and the timing. While they match each other pound for pound—puns beget puns, punches/kicks/shootings inspire another round of such—neither of our leads ever come across as more/less masculine than the other. But when it comes to personality and charisma, Russell owns this shit in spades.

THE BAD GUY

Yves Perret. Drug dealer. Mouse squeezer. Game fixer. Post-Labor-Day white-wearer. Insistence discourager. Grantland Rice quoter. Disliker of both Tango and Cash.

Jack Palance! Now this is one cool motherfucker right here. Perhaps most famous to modern audiences as playing Carl Grissom in Tim Burton's 1989 take on Batman, Palance, over his long career, played an incarnation of Dracula for television, won an Oscar for City Slickers, delighted horror fans in the inexplicably well-cast horror schlock Alone in the Dark (also starring Martin Landau), and finally, for-realsies punched both Marlon Brando and Burt Lancaster square in the face. In Tango & Cash, he presents a refreshingly different take on "the villain" than has been featured in Top Ten Murdered Men so far. While, say, Out for Justice's Richie Madano was a drug-addicted maniacal madman, and Face/Off's Castor Troy was more of a likable cartoon exploding with uncontainable character, Palance's Perret is calm, cool, collected, and calculating. He knows that Tango and Cash are a problem, but unlike his immediate henchmen who assume that killing them off would be best, Perret uses his political and official ties to make his move. He plays it smart, keeping a distance from all the nefaria. He moves like a ghost, drifting unseen down a highway in a stretch limousine, right past one of his busted drug operations; he sneaks into the dripping, rusty prison holding Tango and Cash with as much ease as when he sneaks right back out again. And yet, much like the very white suit he wears, his reputation remains spotless. This might sound like a "boring" appoach to a villain for those who are unfamiliar with the film, but Tango & Cash offers up enough shooting exchanges and body trauma between all of Perret's henchmen so that when it comes time for Tango and Cash to cross paths with Perret in the flesh there's an almost gentlemanly approach by Palance to his villainous character. There's no need to fall back on drawn out gun battles and displays of bravado. At the very least, and though he was doomed to fail because he's the bad guy, his scheme to relegate Tango and Cash to rats in a maze ultimately proves successful—"We're in a maze!" Tango remarks during the final act as they drive their RV-from-hell around Perret's compound—though the end result isn't exactly as Perret had hoped. Besides, Palance was 70 at this point in his career, so it's not like he could do somersaults and throw stuntmen over his head, so shut your mouths. Guy did ONE-ARMED PUSH-UPS AT THE OSCARS. AT 72.

Palance maintained an eclectic career of discerning quality, playing a scenery-chewing Perret two years before he would win that Oscar, and two years after, would be appearing in a direct-to-video sequel to Van Damme's Cyborg. He was an interesting actor, and an even more interesting man, who was able to evaluate his body of work as objectively as one ever could:

"Most of the stuff I do is garbage."

Well then!

THE CASUALTIES

The Good Guys. Abiding by the knees-touching-ground rules, a dozen prisoners fall at the might of Tango and Cash, who utilize a baseball bat and their general surroundings to quell them all. Tango and Cash blast ass across Perret's construction compound in the film's last act, shooting his underlings indiscriminately, and amidst all the flames and explosions, specific individual casualties aren't really captured. It comes across more as general carnage than itemized murder. Cash bellows "that's all of 'em!" at the end of their killathon, and there looked to be about two dozen dudes on site, so, that sounds close enough. Later, Tango and Cash shoot-to-kill six more bad guys, along with Quan (James Hong) and Lopez, Perret's #2s. Cash shoves a grenade into Requin's knickers and punches him down the stairs while Tango high-kicks a random henchman into a glass table—a henchman who had yet to appear on screen, and who likely appeared only so Tango had someone to fight while Cash was taking on another sub-villain that the film had bothered to introduce earlier.

The Bad Guys. Cash's friend Matt gets a slit throat for trying to help our heroes escape the prison and a crooked FBI agent is blown up by a car bomb. Pretty weak, bad guys!

THE BEST KILL

"Face" frying in the power lines of the prison rooftop sure makes for a shocking death!

How about that joke?

THE DAMAGE

Tango and Cash endure a night-time electroshock session down in the prison boiler room. Cash wears pantyhose. Tango dives away from an explosion. Cash takes a shot in the arm.

THE BAD GUY'S COMEUPPANCE

After initially being thrown off by the disorientation of the house of mirrors Perret has in his office for some reason, Tango and Cash aim for the knees on the count of three, but somehow end up shooting him in the brain...on two.

"My sights are off!" Tango says with a shrug.

"Mine too!" Cash agrees.

Sure they are, guys. Sure they are. ♥

THE LINE

Every line in this thing is in high contention for "the line." There is more dialogue dedicated to being ironic or amusing than that which is dedicated merely to providing exposition (boring!) and so determining what stands above the rest is a tall order. However, after Cash completely destroys a Russian civilian's car while in the process of taking down a potential assassin, and after the Russian goes off on a foreign-tongued tirade, Cash smiles a big cheesy smile and quips, "Welcome to America!"

Honorable mention goes to: "FUBAR: Fucked up beyond all recognition" and "English 101."

THE VERDICT

Stallone seems to be, once again, pursuing sequels to every one of his franchises and one-off hits like there's no tomorrow. He unretired Rocky for Creed, wrote Creed II, spearheaded Rambo: Last Blood, and Cliffhanger 2 is shooting right now, as there are more cliffs that need hanging. Given its cult status, and the fact that one can't even mention its title while in the company of like-minded aficionados without a unifying proclamation of "I fucking love that movie!" followed by a subsequent and supreme moment of self-satisfaction, it's perplexing that Stallone hasn't mentioned Tango & Cash 2 even as a side comment. Unpopular opinions are those which show appreciation and enthusiasm for his recent moneymaker, The Expendables franchise, but one wonders how many of its supporters would be willing to erase it all from history if it meant seeing Ray Tango and Gabriel Cash come together for one more pun-hurling, prison-breaking, dick-belittling, high-fiving extravaganza of manliness.