Oh, God. Ray Tango. How he loves to dance. He waltzes in and takes all my drugs,   

                        then tangos back out again.

Ray Tango (Stallone) and Gabriel Cash (Russell) are two highly successful LA based cops, who work in different precincts and cannot stand each other because of their vastly different styles. Tango is a smooth, organized businessman while Cash is a sloppy bachelor. Between the two of them, they have seized millions of dollars of drugs and weapons that belong to crimelord Yves Perret (Palance).

The movie starts with Ray Tango 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 arrested. 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 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 drives by in his limo, complaining about Tango stopping his shipment - and if it's not Tango, then it's Cash.

The film then switches 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 chase, which in turn leads to the apprehension of the suspect. Cash had worn a bulletproof vest all day, saving his life. Later both Tango and Cash learn about a drug deal happening that evening.  Meanwhile 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, 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 works. 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 Perret was behind it, but when he tries to escape from Tango, he's killed by a carbomb.

Tango and Cash later meet Tango's C.O., who advises and aids Tango and Cash in their quest to apprehend or destroy Perret. Armed with an armed vehicle and firepower, Tango 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 Tango's sister Katherine, who was kidnapped by Perret. Requin and Cash get into a fight which ends with Cash putting a grenade down Requin's pants and shoving him down some stairs to his demise. Perret appears and is holding a gun to Katherine's head. Tango and Cash both kill Perret (simulatenously shooting him in the head), and the three leave before the self-destruct sequence destroys the building. The movie ends with a newspaper headline celebrating the vindication of Tango and Cash.

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