#113 – Tango & Cash

Movie Buddy Cops, 

I totally spaced on writing a recap of last last week. But since I’m an OCD completionist I literally can’t stop. We had just Me, Chris and Ivy. But statistically 1/3 of us hadn’t seen this movie. 
Last week we watched a classic 80’s genre defining action movie, Tango and Cash. I pretty much only remember the part at the end where they drive the ‘badass RV’ and blow shit up. But there is a lot more to this movie. Unfortunately I both don’t have the energy to recap a movie that most of us have seen… and it’s been at least a week by the time of writing this. 

Recap!

This movie is much dumber than you remember. I don’t even remember Who plays what character, Stallone = Tango?  Anyway this movie is a relic from a time where you could just put two mega stars in the same movie and people would ignore the crazy plot holes. Stallone shoots a tanker full of what everyone thinks is gasoline… luckily for EVERYONE it’s cocaine. Russell is overshadowed but still has his busts put in the newspaper like the public is tracking the home run race between McGuire and Sosa. Russel is SHOT IN THE CHEST and continues a chase. OH HE HAS A VEST ON. sure he did. 

Anyway the plot is that they are a thorn in the side of Jack Palance, the richest most 80’s drug kingpin ever and instead of just killing them he devises an elaborate plot to frame them and then…kill them in prison? WTF why do any of this! but they escape in a admittedly pretty awesome scene. Then got on the run and try to clear their names. Luckily they know their own version of James Bond’s gadget guy. Who lets them borrow untold numbers of guns and explosives AND the most badass RV? Truck of all time. 

So now we get to the only scene I really remember. They jam on the gas of this lifted dodge ram with a mini gun on the side and ramp into the most over the top drug fortress ever put to the screen. They are chasing bad guys in trucks around this Mario Kart course while blowing shit up like 3 guys in a Halo Warthog. At one point they are chased by a literal monster truck! wtf, why is this part of his security system! and for what? why? Is this Jack Palance’s house? 
eventually they get in, there’s some fights or something… probably some karate kicks, there are probably some thugs that are killed. in the end Palance takes Stallone’s sister hostage and into his hall of mirrors. Why does he have this? Is he just getting blasted on coke and walking through this thing maniacally laughing. Well anyway BOTH Tango and Cash make a split second decision to quick draw and blast him right between the eyes. The audience at this point gives the film a standing ovation and takes to the street to fight crime. whew. 

Facts!

1. The film ultimately earned $63,408,614 in the United States, above its $55 million production budget. 
2.  It’s one of the biggest pirated videos in the history of Russia. There were 80,000 pirated copies. 
3. Patrick Swayze, who was originally cast as Cash, dropped out and went on to star in Road House (1989), 
4. The film ultimately missed its budget by over $20 million, and had to be completely re-edited by editor Stuart Baird prior to its theatrical release. 
5. The film has a score of 31% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 45 reviews, and an average rating of 4.3 out of 10. 
6. In 2012, The Flop House podcast dedicated their 100th episode to Tango & Cash.^[17] They praised it as an enjoyably bad movie and the “last film before irony was created”. Slate later listed the episode as one of “The 25 Best Podcast Episodes Ever”.^[18]       

I also HIGHLY reccomend listening to HDTGM episode about it. Mostly because of how much Jason Manzoukas loves it.  

ALSO in HDTGM podcast news. I hadn’t listened to it in a while, but they recently did a Hercules (Lou Ferrigno) episode, and they did the same thing we did! Paul watched 45 minutes of the wrong Hercules movie. But he did realize it before the end.

We were looking for him to THROW THAT BEAR INTO SPACE for the whole movie. 

anyway. we obviously missed last week,

but keep in touch!

-Mark