Tango & Cash's big sister twist involving Teri Hatcher's character comes off as kind of creepy in hindsight. Following the success of 1987's Lethal Weapon, a bunch of high-profile buddy comedies followed, including Red Heat and Tango & Cash. The latterwas originally supposed to pair Sylvester Stallone (Rambo: Last Blood) with Patrick Swayze, though the latter dropped out and was replaced with Kurt Russell.
Tango & Cash has since become a cult movie due to it's campy, over the top tone and the chemistry of the leads. It's a movie where the late Brion James (Blade Runner) speaks in a cockney accent so horrid it's almost transcendent, and that's not even the silliest thing about it. The film famously suffered through a messy production, going over budget and over schedule, in addition to the original director Andrei Konchalovsky being fired following clashes with producer Jon Peters. Konchalovsky and Stallone had set out to make Tango & Cash a serious action movie with some comedy, while Peters pushed for an all-out spoof. This accounts for its wild swings in terms of tone.
Regardless of its many production woes, Tango & Cash is still a wildly entertaining action movie from a different era. The film also gave Teri Hatcher (Desperate Housewives) one of her first big roles, where she plays Katherine, a club dancer and love interest for Russell's Cash. Her big scene in the movie finds her dancing to Yazoo’s "Don’t Go" while performing a drum solo - for some reason.
Teri Hatcher is quite charming in the role, though being a 1980's action film it's all but inevitable her character gets kidnapped by the villains and has to be rescued. One of the creepier aspects of Tango & Cash involves her relationship with brother Tango (Stallone). For the first half of the movie, it's played like the pair are in a romantic relationship, with Tango becoming strangely jealous when she announces she's heading off on a dance tour. When he and Cash later escape prison, Tango tells Cash to contact Katherine if he needs to get in touch.
This later leads to a goofy scene where Tango walks in on Katherine giving Cash an intense massage - with the dialogue coming off as sexual - while Tango looks on in despair. A fight ensues where their brother-sister connection is finally revealed, but for the remainder of Tango And Cash, the former is obsessed with finding out if Cash and Katherine really did have sex. It's a bizarre twist that's being played for laughs, and the film slightly redeems it when Tango gives Cash a heartfelt speech about being worried about Katherine falling for a cop, and then someday getting a call about their death in the line of duty.
Nonetheless, Tango's borderline flirty interactions with Katherine and revulsion at the mere idea of her sleeping with Cash plays a little creepy now. That said, Tango & Cash isn't known for being subtle, making this subplot oddly in keeping with its whiplash tone.