Tango & Cash

By VARIETY STAFF

Guber-Peters/Warner. Director Andrei Konchalovsky, [Albert Magnoli]; Producer John Peters, Peter Guber, Larry Franco; Screenplay Randy Feldman; Camera Donald E. Thorin; Editor Huber De La Bouillerie, Robert Forretti; Music Harold Faltermeyer; Art Director David Klassen, Richard Berger
 
Sylvester Stallone
Kurt Russell
Teri Hatcher
Jack Palance
Brion James
Michael J. Pollard
 

Tango & Cash is a mindless buddy cop pic, loaded with nonstop action that's played mostly for laughs and delivers too few of them. Inane and formulaic, the film relies heavily on whatever chemistry it can generate between Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell, who repeatedly trade wisecracks while facing life-or-death situations.

Jack Palance re-creates down to each gasp his role from Batman as a snarling crime boss who decides to bring down the two cops who have separately plagued his drug-dealing schemes.

Framed and sent to prison, the two rival cops (named Tango and Cash) become a reluctant team to exonerate themselves. Along the way, they hitch up with Tango's bombshell sister (Teri Hatcher), who happens to be an exotic dancer at some Star Wars-esque nightspot.

The thinking seems to be if you're going to be ridiculous you might as well go at it full throttle, and director Andrei Konchalovsky does just that. Albert Magnoli, helmer of Purple Rain, directed the final two weeks of lensing after Konchalovsky quit in a dispute over pic's ending.

(Color) Widescreen. Available on VHS, DVD. Extract of a review from 1989. Running time: 98 MIN.