Tango & Cash is a 1989 American buddy cop action comedy film starring Sylvester Stallone, Kurt Russell, Jack Palance, and Teri Hatcher.

The film follows the titular pair of rival police detectives who are forced to work together after a criminal mastermind frames them for murder.

The multiple directors were due to a long and troubled production process, that included numerous script rewrites and clashes between Konchalovsky and producer Jon Peters over creative differences.

[4][5] Tango & Cash was released by Warner Bros. in the United States on December 22, 1989, the same day as Always, making it one of the last American films of the 1980s.

Unbeknownst to them however, their intercepted drug shipments belong to a criminal organization headed by Yves Perret.

Frustrated, Perret and his associates plan their revenge against the detectives, but refrain from killing them as to not turn them into martyrs.

Reaching the roof, Cash ziplines outside the prison walls, but Tango is attacked by an inmate before he can follow, and defeats him by knocking him into a transformer.

To clear their names, they separate; Tango tells Cash that if he needs to contact him, he can go to the Cleopatra Club and ask for "Katherine".

The detectives visit the witnesses who framed them in court: Tango intercepts Wyler, who admits that Requin was in charge of the setup, and is killed shortly after by a car bomb; Cash discovers that Skinner made the incriminating tape himself.

He appears in a hall of mirrors holding Kiki at gunpoint; both detectives pick out the correct Perret and shoot him in the head.

[9] Donald E. Thorin, who had shot Stallone's movie Lock Up earlier that year, was Sonnenfeld's replacement.

[10] After nearly three months of filming, director Andrei Konchalovsky was fired by producer Jon Peters in a dispute over the movie's ending.

[11] In his 1999 memoir, Elevating Deception, Konchalovsky said that the reason he was fired was because he and Stallone wanted to give the film a more serious tone and make it more realistic than the producers wanted, especially Jon Peters, who kept pushing for the film to be goofier and campier, and as such, his relationship with Peters became untenable.

[9] Reportedly, executive producer Peter MacDonald, who was also one of the film's second unit directors, took over directing the movie before Magnoli was brought in.

Filming was finished on October 20, 1989, eight weeks before its original scheduled theatrical opening in 1600 theatres across the United States.

[2] The movie was racing to make its December 15 release, but due to the Warner Bros. studio's complaints on every different cut that was edited before they approved the final (theatrical) version, it barely made the deadline and ended up being shipped to theaters in "wet prints" – an industry term meaning that it was just barely completed before its release date.

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.

Baird was also called in by Warner Bros to re-edit another Stallone action movie, Demolition Man (1993), for the same reasons.

"[15] Speaking on both Konchalovsky and Magnoli, Stallone also said: Andrei was a real gentleman and I thought his take on "Tango and Cash" was very good and would've been infinitely more realistic had he been allowed to continue.

His replacement was more attuned to comic pop culture so the film had a dramatic shift into a more light hearted direction.

The film score, which was composed by Harold Faltermeyer, was released for the first time on January 30, 2007 by La-La Land Records (LLLCD 1052) in 3000 Limited Sets.

Rabin said that there was more affection and attention to Tango & Cash than he had expected, based on feedback from people who had seen the film since 1990.

The critical consensus states: "Brutally violent and punishingly dull, this cookie-cutter buddy cop thriller isn't even fun enough to reach 'so bad it's good' status".

[24] Michael Wilmington of the Los Angeles Times called it "a waste of talent and energy on all levels", criticizing the film as both illogical and predictable.

[25] Dave Kehr of the Chicago Tribune wrote that one interpretation of the film is "a crafty foreigner's sly parody of the current state of American culture".

[30] In September 2019, Stallone revealed that he had a story prepared for a potential sequel and was trying to convince Kurt Russell to sign onto the project.