Times were when director Andrei Konchalovsky made acclaimed movies in his native Russia. His Hollywood career showed a certain integrity with Maria's Lovers and Runaway Train, but then he slipped into pulp fiction, and heaven knows what attracted him to this sloppily-scripted variation on Sixties' superspy movies.

There are two heroes for the price of one. Sylvester Stallone (the best thing in the film) is the pin-striped, market-playing Tango. Kurt Russell is the T-shirted Cash.

Both are super-cops, rapidly getting under the skin of major drugs baron Jack Palance who, with the help of henchman Brion James (with a misbegotten 'British' accent that will afford considerable amusement in the UK), railroads our heroes most unconvincingly into prison, from where they escape and blast the bad guys out of existence. End of story.

Despite imaginative sets and bursts of action - the prison scenes are particularly vividly staged - this is a fitfully boring film with perished elastic in its would-be whiplash dialogue.