Released December 22, 1989, the action blockbuster Tango & Cash was (alongside Steven Spielberg’s Always) literally the last movie of the 1980s. Big, loud, dumb, and defiantly unwilling to take itself seriously for even a second, the film could almost be read as commentary on a decade famous for its excess, and a genre that had become dominated by ridiculous macho posturing. It’s possible the original director may have even had some pretense of making that point, but by the time this very messy production rolled out to theaters, any trace of that got hacked away in the edit and all that was left was goofy fun.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Despite bad buzz in industry trades and mostly negative reviews from critics, the movie entertained audiences and performed well at the box office (certainly better than the Spielberg picture did). If never destined to be enshrined as a classic, Tango & Cash is still often remembered fondly as a prime example of testosterone-fueled ’80s nonsense in its purest state.

Title:	Tango & Cash
Year of Release:	1989
Director:	Andrey Konchalovsky
Watched On:	Blu-ray
Available On:	DVD Hoopla Various VOD purchase and rental platforms

Packaged as a team-up for two of the decade’s action icons, the film stars Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell as rival L.A.P.D. detectives from opposite ends of the city. In West Los Angeles, Ray Tango (Stallone) wears expensive suits and spends as much time obsessing over his financial portfolio as he does his case files. Meanwhile in East L.A., Gabe Cash (Russell) is a reckless and cocky loose cannon who lives in a dumpy apartment and can barely be bothered to change his ratty t-shirt every few days. Despite their differences in personality and temperament, they’re both equally effective in their own ways at taking down scumbags and cleaning up crime.

As the two showboating cops compete for attention and publicity, each breaking the other’s arrest record back-and-forth in bigger headline-grabbing busts, their actions draw the ire of nefarious crime boss Yves Perret (Jack Palance chewing a ton of scenery). Fed up with their interference in his operations, Perret frames both men for the murder of an FBI agent, then pulls some strings and arranges for them to be railroaded through a criminal trial, sentenced to prison, and not-so-mistakenly deposited into the middle of a gen-pop rather unfriendly to former police. When it becomes clear that they won’t survive long by following the rules or hoping for help through official channels, Tango and Cash see no choice but to bust out of the joint and gather evidence to clear their names. Doing so will require the help of Tango’s sister, a go-go dancer named Kiki (Teri Hatcher in an early role).

Even by typical ’80s action movie standards, Tango & Cash is a whole lot of foolishness and never pretends otherwise. The plot makes little sense from scene to scene and can’t hold up to any logical scrutiny. The dialogue is filled with bad puns, and even breaks the fourth wall early on when Stallone makes a rude quip about one of his own most famous characters. The actors playing the bad guys, including Jack Palance, almost seem to have been purposefully directed to give poor performances for some reason. (Brion James from Blade Runner delivers what’s supposed to be an “English” accent that sounds more Australian by way of a bad Crocodile Dundee impersonation.)

The action scenes are all over-the-top in the most delightfully absurd, and sometimes flagrantly stupid, ways. When Russell’s character brushes off being shot multiple times in the chest, saying he was lucky he wore his bulletproof vest that day, even though he very clearly has nothing of the sort either over or under his thin t-shirt, the movie practically begs audiences to ignore the reality in front of their eyes. The film’s climax then involves a heavily-armed and tricked-out combat RV that a goofy engineer in the L.A.P.D. (Michael J. Pollard, a featured player in that year’s Superboy TV series) happened to be developing for reasons unexplained, which Tango and Cash of course find excuse to race around a quarry while being chased by monster trucks. Why? Better question: Why the hell not?

Officially, Tango & Cash is credited to director Andrey Konchalovsky, who’d made the very gripping (and far more serious) thriller Runaway Train a few years earlier. However, Konchalovsky was actually fired in the middle of production due to feuds over the picture’s tone with tempestuous producer Jon Peters (Caddyshack, Flashdance). The remainder of the shoot was then taken over, alternately, by uncredited directors Albert Magnoli (Purple Rain), Peter MacDonald (Rambo III), and star Stallone himself. Remarkably, despite all this turmoil, as well as a steady stream of last-minute script rewrites, ace action movie editor Stuart Baird (Superman: The Movie, Lethal Weapon) managed to patch together something remotely coherent out of all the conflicting parts – or at least something entertaining enough that coherency didn’t feel all that necessary for audiences. In the ’80s, a catchy Harold Faltermeyer synth score forgave a multitude of sins.

I have no idea what Konchalovsky may have wanted his version of Tango & Cash to be. Did he think he signed up to make a serious movie, or perhaps just one slightly less dumb than what Peters demanded out of him instead? Regardless, the Tango & Cash we actually got may not be art, but it’s still plenty fun to revisit even decades later.

The Blu-ray

Warner Bros. released Tango & Cash on Blu-ray back in 2009. The disc is so old that it opens with one of the studio’s Blu-ray promo trailers and then auto-plays the feature without going to a menu. As if that weren’t annoying enough, the disc also needlessly defaults to a lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track despite also having a lossless Dolby TrueHD 5.1 option – thus forcing you to pull up the pop-up menu and change settings after the movie has already started.

At first glance, the film appears to be transferred at a 2.40:1 aspect ratio. However, closer inspection shows that the image actually has tiny pillarbox bars on the sides for no reason whatsoever in addition to the letterboxing on top and bottom. Taking that into account, the active picture measures 1907×800 pixels (or about 2.38:1).

As expected this is a fairly dated transfer. The picture’s a little soft, drab, and grainy. Colors and contrast are adequate but hardly notable. Some light edge ringing is occasionally visible. It’s watchable, but the movie could certainly benefit from a 4K remaster off the camera negative should the studio ever feel like investing in one.

Having gotten the confusion of the correct audio track settled, I was pleasantly surprised to find the movie start off with a deep bass thump that made me hopeful this might be one of those old-school 5.1 soundtracks from before the filmmaking community started neutering all the dynamic range out of their sound mixes. Sadly, after that scene, the rest of the audio is much less impressive. Fidelity in general is pretty bland. Switching between them, I had a hard time telling any difference between the lossy and lossless tracks. All the big explosions during the climax are very tepid.

The only bonus feature on the disc is a trailer.

Other Awesome Movies of 1989

• The Abyss
• Batman
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
• The Killer
• Leviathan
• Road House
• UHF
• The Wizard