11.12.08 From the Viking
Real Men Love "Tango & Cash" (page 1)
Written by Christopher Brown
Once again we open the vault for a classic that all Real Men should know and Love. This time it's a trip back to the 80's for a rivalry-turned-buddy-cop movie loaded with explosions, one liners, and two of the biggest action stars of the 80's at the top of their game. It's the movie that made FUBAR a well-known word, and one of the reasons why Real Men Love Tango & Cash.
Kurt Russell and Sylvester Stallone are the top cops in their respective precincts. Both work alone. One is a clean cut stockbroker-style detective with money to burn.; the other, down and dirty street detective, working the seedy underbelly of the city Basically, it’s the Odd Couple
with guns, explosion, and Teri Hatcher (when she was 80s hot).
This is classic 80s action… bigger explosions, badder guns, and more one liners than you can shake a stick at – but all done with a certain tongue-in-cheek tone that makes it enjoyable to watch. For once, the trailer sums it up pretty succinctly.
The Characters
Ray Tango is a big city detective who watches the stock market, rocks an Armani suit, and drives a convertible. At first glance, most people dismiss him as just another suit playing a cop. Underneath, however, he's a tough talking, hard walking detective who's damn good at his job. Even better though, is the fact that Stallone plays the role with a sort of tongue-in-cheek approach, having no fear of making a little bit of fun of himself (or other roles he's played).
Gabriel Cash is a down and dirty detective who gets the job down any way he has to. Kurt Russell plays Cash almost like an ode to his character in Big Trouble in Little China (Another RML classic), with the same smartass attitude and same swagger in his walk and talk…the one that says, yes, my balls are three times the size of yours…ask those blonds over there.
Besides, any movie that casts Jack Palance as the villain and has Clint Howard in it is guaranteed to be classic!
The Girl
Terri Hatcher, in all her 80's hotness, was probably the masturbatory fantasy girl of every dude that saw this movie…She even channels a little Sheena E (look her up if you don't know, boys), and as every man knows, a woman playing the drums is pretty sexy…and even more so when she does it in a bikini top.
The Plot
Between the two of them, Tango and Cash have seized millions of dollars of drugs and weapons that belong to crimelord Yves Perret (Palance). Perret frames them for murder, intending to have them both killed in the prison he controls. At the trial, an audio tape is played, with Tango and Cash discussing buying drugs from the murdered man, just before they shoot him. Tango and Cash, expecting that they'll get sent to a minimum security prison, plead no contest to the charges, but instead are transported a maximum security prison full of criminals they put away.
Perret, with his right-hand man, Requin, show up to the prison and a fight breaks out with Tango and Cash eventually being overrun by criminals let loose by security guards on the take.
However, they are eventually saved by the Prison Warden, who was formerly Cash's Commanding Officer. The warden offers to help Tango and Cash escape, but Tango refuses to break out of prison with Cash, arguing that it's a trap. The escape plan does in fact turn out to be a trap ("It's a TRAP!"), but not by the warden (who turns up murdered along the escape route. Tango and Cash escape.
Tango tells Cash to go to the Cleopatra Club, where his sister, the aforementioned Teri Hatcher (permission to drool…granted!) works.
Tango and Cash then go on to exact revenge against those who framed or help to frame them. Cash learns that it was Requin who manipulated audio of the two to make a fake tape. Tango, meanwhile, interrogates the FBI Agent who testified against them at his house. The agent admits that Perret was behind it, but when he tries to escape from Tango, he's killed by a carbomb.
Tango and Cash later meet Tango's C.O., who advises and aids Tango and Cash in their quest to apprehend or destroy Perret. With an armed vehicle looking like something straight out of Halo 2 and a ton of firepower, Tango and Cash go to the airfield where Perret is hiding out. Using the heavy assault vehicle they arrived in, chaos and 80's style climax ensues…
Why Real Men Love It
One of the things that makes this movie an 80's classic is a scene like this:
All in all, Tango & Cash is one of those movies I could see being tapped for a remake in another 5 years, as we just don't have those types of ass-kicking buddy cop movies any more. It's one of those movies that feeds the male ego and reminds us that there was a time when it was ok to blow things up…especially when things are FUBAR.
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In all honesty, I haven't seen Tango & Cash in years. I need to move that to the top of my Netflix queuueueueueue.
...
... to an age I thought Sylvester Stallone was the epitome of male masculinity...
... which is to say I was 10.
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