#186: Tango & Cash

Release Date: April 3rd, 1992

Format: Streaming (Tubi)

Written by: Randy Feldman

Directed by: Andrei Konchalovsky, Peter MacDonald, and Albert Magnoli

1.5 Stars

Tango & Cash is dead on arrival. 

From the very opening scene, this is a movie in an identity crisis. You can’t give an audience a bunch of farce - heaps of farce - and then expect them to genuinely care. 

It’s a criticism that’s commonly put upon the action-comedy genre, that the quips and silliness of the comedy lowers the emotional stakes of the action.

Watching Tango & Cash tonight, I can see their point. This thing is just plain dull. 

But how can that be? In 1989, Stallone and Russell are bonafide A-List action movie stars, and Tango & Cash also gets a juicy bad guy performance from Jack Palance. It should work. 

But it doesn’t, and I think the producers and directors (yes, there were 3 of them) knew it, and started throwing anything they could think of on the screen.

“Let’s have a scene where Cash is in drag! And we’ll have Teri Hatcher perform a showtune in a bikini! And what if Sly is in a tanktop for the whole movie? Muscles!”

As the silliness and desperation rises, the stakes fall, and by the end, I could give a shit.