Tango & Cash

Tango & Cash is a 1989 American buddy cop action comedy film that was mainly directed by Andrei Konchalovsky, although Albert Magnoli took over in the later stages of filming. It stars Sylvester Stallone, Kurt Russell, Jack Palance, and Teri Hatcher. The film was released in the United States on December 22, 1989.

Tango & Cash follows Raymond Tango and Gabriel Cash, two rival LAPD narcotics detectives, who are forced to work together after the criminal mastermind Yves Perret frames both of them for murder.

Plot

Beverly Hills LAPD Lieutenant Raymond Tango (Sylvester Stallone) and Downtown Los Angeles Lieutenant Gabriel Cash (Kurt Russell) have earned themselves reputations for disrupting crime lord Yves Perret's smuggling operation in their respective jurisdictions. One day, they are informed of a drug deal taking place later that night. Both detectives meet for the first time at the location, but discover a dead body that is wire-tapped before the FBI arrive and surround the duo. Agent Wyler (Lewis Arquette) finds Cash's backup Walther PPK pistol on the floor with a silencer attached and arrests both Cash and Tango. At their murder trial, Tango and Cash are incriminated by an audio tape, secretly given to Wyler by Perret's henchman Requin and verified in court by an audio expert, which appears to reveal them shooting the undercover FBI agent after discussing a drug purchase. They plead no contest to a lesser charge in exchange for reduced sentences in a minimum-security prison, but are instead transported to a maximum-security prison to be housed with many of the criminals they arrested in the past.

Tango

Tango is a partner dance that originated in the 1880s along the River Plate, the natural border between Argentina and Uruguay, and soon spread to the rest of the world.

Early tango was known as tango criollo (Creole tango). Today, there are many forms of tango extant. Popularly and among tango dancing circles, the authentic tango is considered to be the one closest to the form originally danced in Argentina and Uruguay.

On August 31, 2009, UNESCO approved a joint proposal by Argentina and Uruguay to include the tango in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists.

History

Tango is a dance that has influences from European and African culture. Dances from the candombe ceremonies of former slave peoples helped shape the modern day Tango. The dance originated in lower-class districts of Buenos Aires and Montevideo. The music derived from the fusion of various forms of music from Europe. The word "tango" seems to have first been used in connection with the dance in the 1880s, possibly related to the Latin word "tangere" but more likely related to the African slave word "tango" (drum or dance place).

Cash

Cash refers to money in the physical form of currency, such as banknotes and coins.

In bookkeeping and finance, cash refers to current assets comprising currency or currency equivalents that can be accessed immediately or near-immediately (as in the case of money market accounts). Cash is seen either as a reserve for payments, in case of a structural or incidental negative cash flow or as a way to avoid a downturn on financial markets.

Etymology

The word is variously attributed. Some claim that the word "cash" comes from the modern French word caisse, which means (money) box, from the Provençal word caissa, from the Italian cassa, from the Latin capsa all meaning box. In the 18th century, the word passed to refer to the money instead of the actual box containing it. Another claim is that it was derived from Tamil word kāsu (Tamil: காசு) meaning a coin, by East India Company.

"Cash" used as a verb means "to convert to cash"; for example in the expression "to cash a cheque".

History

In Western Europe, after the Collapse of the Western Roman Empire, coins, silver jewelry and hacksilver (silver objects hacked into pieces) were for centuries the only form of money, until Venetian merchants started using silver bars for large transactions in the early Middle Ages. In a separate development, Venetian merchants started using paper bills, instructing their banker to make payments. Similar marked silver bars were in use in lands where the Venetian merchants had established representative offices. The Byzantine empire and several states in the Balkan area and Kievan Rus also used marked silver bars for large payments. As the world economy developed and silver supplies increased, in particular after the colonization of South America, coins became larger and a standard coin for international payment developed from the 15th century: the Spanish and Spanish colonial coin of 8 reales. Its counterpart in gold was the Venetian ducat.