Well-dressed Lieutenant Raymond Tango of the Beverly Hills Police Department is in hot pursuit of a tanker truck. Warned that he is leaving his jurisdiction, Tango speeds in front of the truck, blocks the road, steps out and fires two rounds into the trucker’s windshield. The driver hits the breaks, causing him and his passenger to smash through the windshield. Captain Hendricks shows up with half of the California Highway Patrol. A search reveals the truck is only hauling gasoline and Hendricks screams that Tango thinks he is “Rambo” and demands his badge. Instead, Tango shoots the truck’s fuel tank and cocaine spills out. A limousine slowly passes, carrying crime lord, Yves Perret, and his aides, Lopez and Quan. Perret complains that Tango and another cop, Lieutenant Gabriel Cash, are hurting his business. Quan suggests they murder the two police officers, but Perret has a better idea. The next day, when Cash enters his apartment, an Asian assassin shoots out a wall mirror and enters through the wall. He fires two rounds into Cash, knocking him out the window. However, Cash is wearing a bulletproof vest and discharges a shotgun he has embedded in his boot heel. He pursues the assassin into a parking lot, where the killer leaps into a pickup truck. Tango commandeers a car and a chase ensues, in which cars are demolished and gunfire is exchanged. Cash smashes into a small car, sending it into the pickup truck’s path. The killer loses control and crashes. At the police station, Tango’s young sister, Katherine ''Kiki” Tango, informs him she is going on a dance tour. He begs her not to go when his stockbroker calls, and Kiki sneaks away. At another station, Cash forces the killer into revealing that Quan placed the contract on him and also giving up the location for a drug deal. Across town, Tango receives the same information from Hendricks. At the same time, in a million-dollar office hidden in a rundown warehouse at an abandoned airfield, Perret lets Quan, Lopez, and his bodyguard, Requin, in on his plan to frame Tango and Cash. That night, Tango follows Requin into an industrial building, unaware Cash is sneaking in the back way. Requin gives Tango the slip and he finds himself staring into Cash’s gun. Cash gloats that he is the best cop in Los Angles, until he realizes Tango has a gun pointed at his crotch. They enter an office, and discover a dead man wearing a microphone. Bags of drugs and money sit nearby. FBI agents arrive and arrest them. Agent Wyler “finds” Cash’s spare gun and claims it is the murder weapon. Outside, Requin hands Federal Agent Davis an altered tape that will “prove” Tango and Cash murdered the FBI agent. At the trial, an acoustics expert named Skinner testifies the tape is real, sealing the police officers' fate. Tango and Cash’s lawyers convince them to plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter and spend eighteen months in a minimum security jail. However, they are sent to a maximum-security facility and placed in the general population in different cells. That night, both men are yanked out of t bed, stuffed in bags and tossed down the laundry chute. In the basement, they are surrounded by prisoners. Perret and Requin step from the shadows and announce that the cops are about to die. Although they put up a good fight, Tango and Cash are bound and hung over two tubs of water. Requin orders Cash lowered into the tub and places a power line into the water. When Cash survives, Tango is given the same treatment. Guards, led by Cash’s old captain, Assistant Warden Matt Sokowski, arrive and Requin and Perret slip away. Realizing the men do not stand a chance in prison, Matt supplies them with blueprints to the facility. However, Tango does not trust Matt and leaves Cash to escape on his own. Cash sneaks off and finds a ventilation shaft with a fan turned off. He is about to emerge on the other side, when Warden Sokowski’s dead body rolls into the shaft, followed by dogs and guards. Before he can escape, the fan is turned on, blocking his exit. Tango appears and stops the fan blades with a pipe. They escape to the yard, scale a water tower, and jump over a barbed wire fence. Cash uses his belt to slide down an electrical line to freedom, but before Tango can follow, he is attacked by a prisoner wielding a grappling hook on a chain. Tango electrocutes the prisoner by pushing him into a transformer. Before they split up, Tango tells Cash he can contact him through Katherine at the Cleopatra club. Cash goes to the police laboratory where his friend Owen supplies him with clothes, weapons and a new pair of gun boots. He then finds Skinner, the acoustics expert, and forces him to turn over a cassette tape of Perret hiring him to frame Cash. Across town, Tango breaks into Wyler’s house and gets him to reveal Requin paid him to set Tango up. Wyler gives Tango the slip, but when he jumps into his car, it blows up. Cash goes to the Cleopatra, but no one knows a “Katherine.” As cops swarm the club, Kiki begins her number. She spots Cash and signals him to go to the dressing room. Kiki dresses Cash in drag and they escape as Kiki pretends to be his lesbian lover. At Kiki’s apartment, Tango enters and thinks he hears Cash and Kiki having sex. Instead, Kiki is popping Cash’s slipped disk back in place. Tango then sees a shadow at the door and leaps on it to discover it is Capt. Hendricks. After Cash produces Skinner’s tape, Hendricks assures them he can keep the police away from them for twenty-four hours and gives them Requin’s name and address. The next morning, Cash breaks into Requin’s apartment. The killer gets the drop on him, but Tango appears and turns the table on the hitman. They take Requin to the rooftop and dangle him over the side. When Requin refuses to talk, Tango tapes a grenade into his mouth. This convinces Requin to give up Perret. The two cops go to see Owen who provides them with an armored car with mounted machine guns. They drive to Perret’s hideout. Before they go in, Cash promises to leave Kiki alone unless he has Tango’s blessing. He races the armored car, smashes the gates, and gets into a running battle with a dozen trucks firing bullets and rockets. They destroy the other vehicles, only to have two bulldozers box them in and slowly crush the armored car. Tango and Cash crawl out a roof hatch, shoot the bulldozer drivers, climb into the bulldozers and ram Perret’s building. Inside, Perret activates a self-destruct mechanism to blow up the facility, then sends Quan and Lopez after Tango and Cash. With only eleven minutes before detonation, the bomb is set to explode. The pair engage in a shootout with Quan and Lopez. Although they kill the men, Lopez gets off a lucky shot, hitting Cash in the arm. They storm into Perret’s office, to find him holding a razor to Kiki’s throat. Requin and Sonny, another bodyguard, appear. Requin reveals he is holding a grenade, and the two men put down their guns. A brutal hand-to-hand battle takes place until Cash pulls the grenade out of Requin’s hand, sticks it down the killer’s pants and pushes him down a flight of stairs. The explosion distracts Sonny, allowing Tango to beat him unconscious. They run into a hall of mirrors to find Perret holding a gun to Kiki’s head. Tango pulls a spare gun from his ankle holster while Cash falls on his back and fires his gun boots. Both shots hit Perret between the eyes. They grab Kiki and rush out of the building seconds before it blows up. As they lie in the dirt, Cash declares he has earned the right to date Kiki. When Tango responds, “Over dead body”, Cash yells “Deal!”