Tango & Cash - 12th June 2011
It has wild shifts in tone that give it the appearance of an action heavy, mismatched buddy cop movie when really it teeters on the edge of being a spoof of that genre, with it's wise cracking, oddball array of secondary characters and, in one scene, cross dressing.
It has a paper thin set up that has plot holes a-plenty, no ending and darts from one scene to the next happily abandoning any pretense of structure or explanation, everything has to be taken on face value and everything, no matter how implausible is simply there to push us on to the next implausible thing. Basically it's one of those 'check your inner film snob at the door' type films, for this you should just sit back, laugh and enjoy.
Especially at some of the 'meta' or 'knowing' jokes that are in the film like Stallone, early on, saying "Rambo was a pussy".
It is for the reasons above that explaining the plot for this cheese-ball fest that ricochets from gags to garottings, is a bit like trying to explain the appeal of Kurt Russell's mullet. On him, it just works.
However, very quickly, it involves an underworld king pin played by Jack Palance who has an evil villain warehouse lair with a maze for his mice (evil mice presumably) in the top of his bar, a wall of televisions and red haired, pony tail wearing hard man with one of the worst British accents to appear on screen since The Van Dykester in that Poppins movie. Wouldn't you know that his elaborate drug smuggling plots are aways foiled by either the scruffy, fast talking, cowboy boot wearing and mullet sporting Gabriel Cash, who has a very nifty gun with a glaringly obvious laser site or by Raymond Tango, the Armani suit wearing, stocks and shares dealing, bespectacled tree-trunk of a cop who does the job purely for the thrills and not the cash.
Despite being able to orchestrate a fairly obvious, yet curiously successful, frame up of the two troublesome coppers and through, what must've been some fairly hefty string pulling, manage to get them into a prison for hardened criminals, most of whom they have put away, he still refuses, even when he has them in his grasp, to just, I don't know, shoot them in the face, for reasons neither I nor James Wong will ever understand.
Through an even more massive contrivance the two narrowly escape from prison, Cash hooks up with Tango's sister, while dressed as a woman (because he's that much of a man or maybe she is a bit bi-curious) and that leads to some hilarious indignant posturing from Tango. This goes on for a while until everyone decides to be friends, take a super truck thing from Cash's weird Q (from James Bond) like friend and storm the gates of the evil hideout and blow everything up. Which presumably, if they wanted to, they could've done this months ago and saved the tax payers the cost of an expensive trial.
Still, it all works out in the end, sort of.
Well it actually has an A-Team like ending but then just when you expect to see some postscript of maybe Tango and Cash strolling down the beach playing ball with a strangers dog while Terry Hatcher, Tango's sister, struts around laughing like an idiot in a bikini, instead you just get the credits with little to no idea whether these two on-the-lam cops will be sent back to prison or what. Let's assume, for argument's sake, that the entire city is now safe and they all have a lovely holiday in Rio for a month.
Maybe for all these reasons it's a bit of a lost gem. While you can hardly call yourself a fan of Stallone or Russell's without having seen it, I think, for the masses, it has been lost through the years under a pile of Die Hard's, Lethal Weapon's, Stallone's own franchises of Rocky and Rambo and even 48 Hours which seems to be more fondly remembered than messers Raymond Tango and Gabriel Cash.
It's a shame because it's pretty out there, pretty funny, well performed by both leads, atmospherically directed and one of the lucky few that bares the credit - Score by Harold Faltermeyer, no it's not going to win any Oscars or even points for good plotting from the Marlon Brando school for incomprehensible gibberish spouted by drunk bus drivers but if you disengage your brain and switch on your dopey man grin then you'll be in for a good 90 minutes of hilarity, bad hair and bonkers kick assery.
7 out of 10 slices of surreal man cake
Points from The Wife - 6 out of 10
You can hear me discuss Tango & Cash and more Stallone/Russell films on episode 2 & 3 of The Podcast from the After Movie Diner which can be downloaded from iTunes or http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/110745
or just listen to it here on the site using the Talkshoe player on your left
or go to http://amdpodcast.blogspot.com
Cobra - 25th April 2011
The reason I mention this is that Cobra, the film I'm reviewing, I actually resisted buying back in the day. If I could go back in time I would find the younger version of myself and slap him round the chops quite hard, why on earth resist buying more films? especially one where the tagline is 'Crime is a disease. Meet the cure.'
That I saw this wondrously over-the-top, enjoyable and very 80s serial killer/cop/action movie at all was down to the persistence of my lovely and, at the time, far more knowledgable wife. You see, believe it or not but before I got married the only Stallone film I had any time for was Copland. In fact my action intake in general was fairly mainstream and obvious, as I think I have mentioned elsewhere in the blog.
Starting with Rambo:First Blood and Rocky, the bona fide classics of his career, my wife introduced me to Stallone. To my mind these were basically B-Movies, or at least had B-Movie sensibilities, which I mean as a good thing. They had simple, bordering on cliche'd, plots (maybe they started the cliche) and cartoonish characters (not in a bad way) but they were inventively written, well directed, had an engaging story and great set pieces.
Yes there was a lot of 'All-American' simplified message preaching and male ego chest thumping in there but not in a 'country and western ballad' type way and it was kept subtle enough so that if you embraced that as a staple of the genre and the man, rather than Britishly and cynically scoffing at it, then his films were just really a good, fun and exciting watch.
From growing up on mainly comedies, horrors and blockbusters I found another genre in Stallone's movies that I loved. I think of them as second tier pictures for some reason, although I know he's a big star, the films don't seem to have that horrible studio sheen to them, they seem more independently spirited to me and this may have something to do with the fact that Stallone often co-writes and directs his films too.
This brings us to Cobra which finally, after my wife's near inhuman patience with silly old me was stretched to breaking point, we picked up, watched and I, of course, ended up absolutely adoring every ridiculous, over blown, cheesy and excessively violent moment of.
Yes the morals of the piece are highly dubious. The idea that the only way to stop violent crime is to hit them back and hit them hard, killing, maiming or blowing up as many criminals as possible, without any due process or trial, seems as ludicrous as the concept of good and evil but that's the point, that's why it's so enjoyable!
It doesn't feel the need to be hampered by whining on about societies grey areas or making some big political statement, it's an action flick and no matter if it is the simpler eighties or the over thinking noughties, in the end, the lone, gun toting, man of few words (save for a few clever one liners) is going to either get his man or kill his man anyway, so why hold up or halt the process with a lot of naval gazing wank?! Just wind up the good guy, arm him to the teeth and set him loose.
As hard and as ruthless as Jack Bauer is, the makers of 24 could've learnt a lot from Cobra, stop the waffle and get the job done! I am adult enough and intelligent enough to realise this is not how things should be done in the real world, ok?
The action starts with a city in the grip of a crimewave. A crazy wacked out hairy guy with a green army jacket and a shot gun is terrorising a supermarket, we are never really sure why but it is something to do with anarchy and a new world order. Then, within seconds, the scene becomes an enormous police siege. After really what is only a few more seconds the decision has been made that it is all hopeless and the only way to stop this from escalating is to send in The Cobra.
What or who are they talking about? you'd be right to ask. Let me explain.
You see, when there's a situation that all of the police and swat teams couldn't possibly handle (like a single crazy with a shotgun in a supermarket) they use a special division of the police force called the zombie squad, headed up by the laughably named Marion Cobretti and his seemingly 75 year old hispanic friend Gonzales.
Stallone plays Marion 'The Cobra' Cobretti (like that's even a real last name) and he is a one man army against crime with a mean and righteous attitude, plenty of ready quips, some mirror shades, a pearl handled revolver and probably a whole heap of unresolved mummy and daddy issues tied to his silly name and he dispenses justice the only way he knows how, loudly and with maximum destruction. He lives in a shitty neighbourhood but drives a classic car and the moment he whiffs a pretty damsel in distress he is on the case and he doesn't care how loudly he has to shout or which desk he has to bang to make sure he stays on it.
The plot continues and as soon as Cobra has dispensed with the man in the market by cleverly using his carefully honed and highly trained detective skills to shoot him with a gun, he then exits, dismisses the press and their liberal, wet whining about human rights and drives off in his big black muscle car.
We then find out that a serial killer has been bumping people off all over the city and the police can't find a pattern so they don't know what to do or where to look. This is because actually it's a whole gang of nutjobs in a rented van, who in their spare time like to stand in darkened warehouses in front of giant fans blowing orange hued smoke everywhere, banging axes together like some sort of German death metal music video and they are hell bent on bringing anarchy, violence and fear to these murky, neon-tinged streets.
One night these muscley mentals mess up and leave a witness alive in the form of fashion model and professional tall blonde person, Bridgette Nielson. Instead of lying low and realising that the police have absolutely no other evidence other than an eye witness and, if they were caught, the case would be an easy winner, they decide to come out of the shadows and spend all their time and resources tracking down and killing this one woman.
After lots of arguments with his superiors, Marion Cobretti is on the case and he will stop at nothing to protect this young bit of tail even if he has to shoot or blow up everything from LA to San Francisco to do it, no matter how many innocent lives he endangers in the process and that's about it. I, for one, don't need any more than that.
Be honest, if you are reading this and you haven't seen the film, you want to watch it right now, yes?
Re-watching this film recently, for maybe the third time, I was struck with just how good and gruesome the first half of the film is. The bad guys, for all their stupidity, are genuinely vicious bastards and there is a good element of slasher horror film during the opening act. If you're more a fan of horror than you are of 80s action it is definitely worth checking out.
After that though the film basically becomes an all out action fest with an excellent car chase (not unlike the one in Blazing Magnum, untilising the bridges of Venice Beach to great effect), some shoot outs and all climaxing in a big battle with Cobra & Gonzales versus every anarchistic thug that team evil could muster, at a road side motel. Gonzales, because he's ancient and useless, is injured in the first 10 seconds and it's up to Stallone to take out everyone else.
This preposterous brilliance inexplicably ends with Stallone duking it out, mano a mano, with the head baddie in yet another orange hued warehouse.
So, is it the best film Stallone has ever made? no and is it the best action movie ever made? no, of course not but it is one of my favourites because it was a film, not unlike how I described Army of Darkness and The Expendables in previous blogs, that I finished watching and just wished there more films out there like this. Films where the hero says, in response to a villain wailing about 'blowing this fucking supermarket sky high', with a completely straight face, "I don't care, I don't shop here"
Brilliant, a guilty pleasure yes but absolutely brilliant.
9 out of 10 big fat, tall, all-American, hamburgers with all the trimmings
Points from The Wife - 10 out of 10
The Expendables - 14th August 2010
The night I saw this film started with The Expendables, ended with a midnight screening of The Blues Brothers and wedged between these two fantastic yet fairly different films was a trip to Lombardi's for some of the best calzones I have ever had. To describe this as a perfect night would be an understatement.
Not sure I had grinned that much in a long time.
I think it was at the point when Sly Stallone, flying an enormous cargo plane with front mounted machine guns and Jason Statham, controlling those guns, his little bald dome, complete with shades, sticking ludicrously out of a hatch in the nose of the plane took out the entire port of a small South American island in an eruption of flames, noise and manly air punches that The Expendables instantly became my film of 2010 and that wasn't more than about 20 minutes into the movie.There aren't enough joyous swearwords in the world to exclaim how BRILLIANT this film is. Yes, ok, so the film looks like what might happen after a severe accident at a plastic surgery clinic, run by a seriously deranged ex-wrestler, if they suddenly gave all their patients ridiculously enormous artillery and despatched them to the Gulf of Mexico but that is entirely part of the exuberant joy of this movie!Plus Mickey Rourke does more acting with a clay pipe and his hideously deformed lips than De Niro has managed in a decade.
The Expendables is seriously the sort of film that I miss because they hardly ever make them like this any more. It was so refreshing too. Apart from the odd guilty pleasure like Taken, I feel like I haven't seen a seriously good action movie since maybe Kill Bill 1 and even that was over hyped. Superhero movies don't count, I'm sorry, I know they have action in them but they also have ridiculous, over-the-top angst engulfed, soap operatic, preachy stretches about the nature of humanity and all that whiny, emotional plodding about. That's not to say The Expendables doesn't have character development, it does, more, dare I say it, than Inception or Avatar but it is done by the people involved actually acting their characters (which is a novel idea) and in fact the only person who says more than a handful of comically mumbled one liners is Mickey Rourke and it's a genuinely affecting and awesome scene.
On a quick side note, considering they are based on 'comic' books it's litteraly amazing how seriously most comic book movies take themselves. Mind-blowingly staggering now that I think about it. This is not a crime that The Expendables can be accused of as every line visibly drips and reeks of tongue-in-cheek, lads-own adventure tomfoolery and a healthy sense of irony dashed with a yearning for former glory days.
But enough of all that analytical mumbo jumbo, what about the violence and the action I hear you cry! Well it is some of the most inventive, frantic, exciting, funny, fantastically over the top and watchable violence possibly of all time.
Made me realise just how atrocious other movies are in general at the moment and also made me realise just how god awful Tarantino is these days.The action and dialogue in this was better than Inglorious Basterds and the car chase better than 50 Death Proofs combined. (I honestly can't believe Kurt Russell turned this down! his agents should be dragged out to a field and beaten to death with a frozen chicken for not thrusting this into his hand and screaming 'Do this now or never eat lunch in this town again!')I stick this film in with the likes of Rambo 3, Cobra & Tango & Cash as some of the most enjoyable Stallone has EVER been. It doesn't have the classic stature of a Rocky or a First Blood but it doesn't aim for that. This is a classic of a different kind, one that, like Taken, I will get out and watch time and time again to feel good and have a blast.
Now about the cast, it is a bit of a hodge podge of old action stars, Stallones old fast food buddies and ex-wrestlers all of whom are fine, if not occasionally underused. Thinking about this film again (and reading about Kurt Russel declining to be a part of it) there are any number of other people that some may have on their wish list for a man-fest such as this. Bruce Campbell, Fred Williamson, Kurt Russell, Keith David, Steven Segal and Van Damme would be some of mine, with a Charlie Sheen cameo because, well, every film needs a Charlie Sheen cameo. (who would you pick??)I think, considering the sheer size of the cast (both in number and bi-cep size) I actually feel Stallone did a good job of giving each of them their moment to shine. Yes, some had a shorter time to shine than others but as ensemble movies go I didn't feel short changed by any of them. My big applause goes out to Mickey Rourke, Jason Statham and Eric Roberts as particularly good in their roles.I have been racking my noggin trying to see if there was anything about this film that I didn't like and apart from the fact that he used the same song twice on the soundtrack, when there are any number of heavy country rock anthems he could have used, I don't think there was. It is going to take some special film to knock this off my top spot for the year and the year is almost over. I am so glad it's doing really well at the box office, it shows, more than Inceptions success shows, that people are sick of the same old child-friendly, spoon-feeding bilge that we've been showered in lately.Bring on The Expendables Two: Mission to Moscow!!
10 out of 10 freshly squeezed orange juices
Points from the Misses - 9 out of 10 freshly squeezed orange juices
The night I saw this film started with The Expendables, ended with a midnight screening of The Blues Brothers and wedged between these two fantastic yet fairly different films was a trip to Lombardi's for some of the best calzones I have ever had. To describe this as a perfect night would be an understatement.
Not sure I had grinned that much in a long time.
I think it was at the point when Sly Stallone, flying an enormous cargo plane with front mounted machine guns and Jason Statham, controlling those guns, his little bald dome, complete with shades, sticking ludicrously out of a hatch in the nose of the plane took out the entire port of a small South American island in an eruption of flames, noise and manly air punches that The Expendables instantly became my film of 2010 and that wasn't more than about 20 minutes into the movie.There aren't enough joyous swearwords in the world to exclaim how BRILLIANT this film is. Yes, ok, so the film looks like what might happen after a severe accident at a plastic surgery clinic, run by a seriously deranged ex-wrestler, if they suddenly gave all their patients ridiculously enormous artillery and despatched them to the Gulf of Mexico but that is entirely part of the exuberant joy of this movie!Plus Mickey Rourke does more acting with a clay pipe and his hideously deformed lips than De Niro has managed in a decade.
The Expendables is seriously the sort of film that I miss because they hardly ever make them like this any more. It was so refreshing too. Apart from the odd guilty pleasure like Taken, I feel like I haven't seen a seriously good action movie since maybe Kill Bill 1 and even that was over hyped. Superhero movies don't count, I'm sorry, I know they have action in them but they also have ridiculous, over-the-top angst engulfed, soap operatic, preachy stretches about the nature of humanity and all that whiny, emotional plodding about. That's not to say The Expendables doesn't have character development, it does, more, dare I say it, than Inception or Avatar but it is done by the people involved actually acting their characters (which is a novel idea) and in fact the only person who says more than a handful of comically mumbled one liners is Mickey Rourke and it's a genuinely affecting and awesome scene.
On a quick side note, considering they are based on 'comic' books it's litteraly amazing how seriously most comic book movies take themselves. Mind-blowingly staggering now that I think about it. This is not a crime that The Expendables can be accused of as every line visibly drips and reeks of tongue-in-cheek, lads-own adventure tomfoolery and a healthy sense of irony dashed with a yearning for former glory days.
But enough of all that analytical mumbo jumbo, what about the violence and the action I hear you cry! Well it is some of the most inventive, frantic, exciting, funny, fantastically over the top and watchable violence possibly of all time.
Made me realise just how atrocious other movies are in general at the moment and also made me realise just how god awful Tarantino is these days.The action and dialogue in this was better than Inglorious Basterds and the car chase better than 50 Death Proofs combined. (I honestly can't believe Kurt Russell turned this down! his agents should be dragged out to a field and beaten to death with a frozen chicken for not thrusting this into his hand and screaming 'Do this now or never eat lunch in this town again!')I stick this film in with the likes of Rambo 3, Cobra & Tango & Cash as some of the most enjoyable Stallone has EVER been. It doesn't have the classic stature of a Rocky or a First Blood but it doesn't aim for that. This is a classic of a different kind, one that, like Taken, I will get out and watch time and time again to feel good and have a blast.
Now about the cast, it is a bit of a hodge podge of old action stars, Stallones old fast food buddies and ex-wrestlers all of whom are fine, if not occasionally underused. Thinking about this film again (and reading about Kurt Russel declining to be a part of it) there are any number of other people that some may have on their wish list for a man-fest such as this. Bruce Campbell, Fred Williamson, Kurt Russell, Keith David, Steven Segal and Van Damme would be some of mine, with a Charlie Sheen cameo because, well, every film needs a Charlie Sheen cameo. (who would you pick??)I think, considering the sheer size of the cast (both in number and bi-cep size) I actually feel Stallone did a good job of giving each of them their moment to shine. Yes, some had a shorter time to shine than others but as ensemble movies go I didn't feel short changed by any of them. My big applause goes out to Mickey Rourke, Jason Statham and Eric Roberts as particularly good in their roles.I have been racking my noggin trying to see if there was anything about this film that I didn't like and apart from the fact that he used the same song twice on the soundtrack, when there are any number of heavy country rock anthems he could have used, I don't think there was. It is going to take some special film to knock this off my top spot for the year and the year is almost over. I am so glad it's doing really well at the box office, it shows, more than Inceptions success shows, that people are sick of the same old child-friendly, spoon-feeding bilge that we've been showered in lately.Bring on The Expendables Two: Mission to Moscow!!
10 out of 10 freshly squeezed orange juices
Points from the Misses - 9 out of 10 freshly squeezed orange juices
The night I saw this film started with The Expendables, ended with a midnight screening of The Blues Brothers and wedged between these two fantastic yet fairly different films was a trip to Lombardi's for some of the best calzones I have ever had. To describe this as a perfect night would be an understatement.
Not sure I had grinned that much in a long time.
I think it was at the point when Sly Stallone, flying an enormous cargo plane with front mounted machine guns and Jason Statham, controlling those guns, his little bald dome, complete with shades, sticking ludicrously out of a hatch in the nose of the plane took out the entire port of a small South American island in an eruption of flames, noise and manly air punches that The Expendables instantly became my film of 2010 and that wasn't more than about 20 minutes into the movie.
There aren't enough joyous swearwords in the world to exclaim how BRILLIANT this film is.
Yes, ok, so the film looks like what might happen after a severe accident at a plastic surgery clinic, run by a seriously deranged ex-wrestler, if they suddenly gave all their patients ridiculously enormous artillery and despatched them to the Gulf of Mexico but that is entirely part of the exuberant joy of this movie!
Plus Mickey Rourke does more acting with a clay pipe and his hideously deformed lips than De Niro has managed in a decade.
The Expendables is seriously the sort of film that I miss because they hardly ever make them like this any more. It was so refreshing too. Apart from the odd guilty pleasure like Taken, I feel like I haven't seen a seriously good action movie since maybe Kill Bill 1 and even that was over hyped. Superhero movies don't count, I'm sorry, I know they have action in them but they also have ridiculous, over-the-top angst engulfed, soap operatic, preachy stretches about the nature of humanity and all that whiny, emotional plodding about. That's not to say The Expendables doesn't have character development, it does, more, dare I say it, than Inception or Avatar but it is done by the people involved actually acting their characters (which is a novel idea) and in fact the only person who says more than a handful of comically mumbled one liners is Mickey Rourke and it's a genuinely affecting and awesome scene.
On a quick side note, considering they are based on 'comic' books it's litteraly amazing how seriously most comic book movies take themselves. Mind-blowingly staggering now that I think about it. This is not a crime that The Expendables can be accused of as every line visibly drips and reeks of tongue-in-cheek, lads-own adventure tomfoolery and a healthy sense of irony dashed with a yearning for former glory days.
But enough of all that analytical mumbo jumbo, what about the violence and the action I hear you cry! Well it is some of the most inventive, frantic, exciting, funny, fantastically over the top and watchable violence possibly of all time.
Made me realise just how atrocious other movies are in general at the moment and also made me realise just how god awful Tarantino is these days.
The action and dialogue in this was better than Inglorious Basterds and the car chase better than 50 Death Proofs combined.
(I honestly can't believe Kurt Russell turned this down! his agents should be dragged out to a field and beaten to death with a frozen chicken for not thrusting this into his hand and screaming 'Do this now or never eat lunch in this town again!')
I stick this film in with the likes of Rambo 3, Cobra & Tango & Cash as some of the most enjoyable Stallone has EVER been. It doesn't have the classic stature of a Rocky or a First Blood but it doesn't aim for that. This is a classic of a different kind, one that, like Taken, I will get out and watch time and time again to feel good and have a blast.
Now about the cast, it is a bit of a hodge podge of old action stars, Stallones old fast food buddies and ex-wrestlers all of whom are fine, if not occasionally underused. Thinking about this film again (and reading about Kurt Russel declining to be a part of it) there are any number of other people that some may have on their wish list for a man-fest such as this. Bruce Campbell, Fred Williamson, Kurt Russell, Keith David, Steven Segal and Van Damme would be some of mine, with a Charlie Sheen cameo because, well, every film needs a Charlie Sheen cameo. (who would you pick??)
I think, considering the sheer size of the cast (both in number and bi-cep size) I actually feel Stallone did a good job of giving each of them their moment to shine. Yes, some had a shorter time to shine than others but as ensemble movies go I didn't feel short changed by any of them. My big applause goes out to Mickey Rourke, Jason Statham and Eric Roberts as particularly good in their roles.
I have been racking my noggin trying to see if there was anything about this film that I didn't like and apart from the fact that he used the same song twice on the soundtrack, when there are any number of heavy country rock anthems he could have used, I don't think there was. It is going to take some special film to knock this off my top spot for the year and the year is almost over. I am so glad it's doing really well at the box office, it shows, more than Inceptions success shows, that people are sick of the same old child-friendly, spoon-feeding bilge that we've been showered in lately.
Bring on The Expendables Two: Mission to Moscow!!
10 out of 10 freshly squeezed orange juices
Points from the Misses - 9 out of 10 freshly squeezed orange juices
Points from the Misses - 9 out of 10 freshly squeezed orange juices