Tango & Cash
Ray Tango (Stallone) and Gabriel Cash (Russell) are two highly successful Los Angeles-based narcotics cops, who work in different precincts and cannot stand each other because of their vastly different styles. Tango is a smooth, organized businessman who spends the morning with the Wall Street Journal, while Cash is a sloppy bachelor. Between the two of them, they have seized millions of dollars of drugs and weapons that belong to crime lord Yves Perret (Palance).
The movie starts with Ray Tango in his Cadillac Allante, driving down a desert highway, pursuing a tractor trailer. When Tango tries to pass the truck, the truck blocks the pass. Eventually, Tango gets around, and drives a far enough distance ahead of the truck. He pulls out his police-issue .38 revolver and shoots two bullets in the windshield, eventually causing the truck to stop, and the passengers to be under arrest. After the uniformed police arrive, they open the tanker and find nothing inside except gas. An LA County Deputy starts screaming at Tango. He demands his name, his badge number, and "Who the Hell do you think you are?" To which another Deputy replies,"He thinks he's Rambo!" When it seems nothing is to be found, Tango grins, says "Rambo is a pussy." Tango proceeds to shoot the side of the tanker the truck, proclaiming "It's Snowing!" as a stream of cocaine pours out. He then quips "Anyone wanna get high?" Unseen by the police, mob boss Perret (Jack Palance) drives by in his limo, complaining about Tango stopping his shipment—and if it's not Tango, then it's Cash.
Cut to Gabriel Cash coming back to his apartment, where he picks up a paper, reads about his bust, and looks at himself in the mirror. A Chinese assassin shoots Cash twice in the chest, leading to a small chase, which leads to the apprehension of the suspect. Cash had worn a bulletproof vest all day, saving his life (though giving him a bad case of body odor).
In one of the movie's memorable moments, Cash and his assassin are in the bathroom. Cash dismisses the cop standing guard in the bathroom, puts a chair on the chest of his assassin, and sits on it, interrogating him in a roundabout fashion. He finds out about a deal going down that night. The same deal is found out about by Tango via a wire tap.
Perret decides to take care of both of these thorns in his side, but he doesn't want to create martyrs, so he frames them for murder. As both arrive to the deal, they find a dead Federal Agent, and have the murder weapons planted on them. They're taken into custody. With both Tango and Cash away in prison—a prison Perret controls—he believes that he can easily have them killed there once they are sufficiently disgraced.
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 enter a no contest plea to a charge of voluntary manslaughter, in the expecation that they'll get sent to a minimum security prison. However, they end up being transported to a maximum security prison, and put in with the general population. As they enter, they are peppered with threats from the people they helped to put away.
Perret shows up with his right-hand man, Requin (Brion James), and a fight breaks out with Tango and Cash eventually being overrun by criminals let loose by security guards on the take. Tango and Cash are dunked into pools where Requin holds a live fuse and puts it into the water, where electricity is run through for the amusement of the prisoners. However, they are eventually saved by the Prison Warden, Matt Zachowski, who comes in with a group of loyal prison guards. Zachowski, Cash's former commander, recommends that Tango and Cash escape, and helps to aid in their escape. Tango, though, believes that Zachowski is as corrupt as the rest of the prison guards, and refuses to break out of prison with Cash, arguing that it's a trap.
The escape plan turns out to be a trap, though not by Zachowski, whom Cash finds murdered near the end of the escape route, presumably by Perret and his crew. Just before Cash can be boxed in, he's saved by Tango, who manages to stop a large fan long enough for Cash to crawl through it. After a prisonwide chase, and a brief fight with one of the inmates, Tango and Cash escape. Tango tells Cash to go to the Cleopatra Club, where his sister (Teri Hatcher) works in case he need to contact him later.
Tango and Cash then go on to exact revenge against those who framed or help to frame them. The audio expert is visited by Cash, where Cash takes a shotgun and destroys the audio equipment. Cash finds out 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 Requin was behind it, but when he tries to escape from Tango, he's killed by a carbomb. Later on, Cash goes to the Cleopatra in search of Katherine. A dancer named Kiki takes the stage and goes into her dance routine and spots Cash watching her. After her performance, she introduces herself to him as Katherine. Unfortunately the police have shown up at the Cleopatra in search of Cash and have the place staked out. However, Katherine manages to sneak Cash out by disguising himself as a woman.
Later that night, Tango spots Cash and Katherine inside her house where she is giving him a back massage (which Tango mistakes for the two of them having sex). Before he can react further, he sees an intruder on the other side if the house and breaks in through the back door to apprehend him, but it turns out to be Tango's C.O. Cash quickly comes outside and after a brief exchange, discovers that Katherine is Tango's sister and that her house is really his house. Tango's C.O. then advises and aids Tango and Cash in their quest to apprehend or destroy Perret. Armed with an armed vehicle and firepower provided by Leo, Cash's zany inventor friend, he and Cash go to the airfield where Perret is hiding out. Using the heavy assault vehicle they arrived in, Perret's lines of defense are eradicated at the hands of the two. Tango and Cash eventually kill Perret's inner-circle and save Katherine, who was kidnapped by Perret. They are then confronted by Requin(who is holding Katherine at knifepoint) and Sonny, another of Perret's men. After tossing Katherine aside, a fight ensues and Cash manages to put a grenade down Requin's pants and shoving him down some stairs to his demise, while Tango knocks out Sonny. Perret appears and is holding a gun to Katherine's head. Tango and Cash both kill Perret (simultaneously shooting him in the head), and the three leave before the self-destruct sequence destroys the building. Afterward, some good-natured banter occurs between Tango and Cash with Katherine playing referee and ending with Cash telling Tango he's finally earned the right to date his sister. Tango humorously replies that would only happen over his dead body. Cash grins and says “Deal”. Tango grins back and they high-five each other. The movie ends with a newspaper headline celebrating the vindication of Tango and Cash.
