Beverly Hills, California LAPD Lieutenant Raymond Tango and Downtown Los Angeles Lieutenant Gabriel Cash have earned themselves reputations for disrupting crime lord Yves Perret's smuggling operation in their respective jurisdictions. Perret, believing that having them killed is too "quick and easy," develops an elaborate scheme to discredit and humiliate them before finally torturing them to death. Individually informed of a drug deal taking place later that night, the detectives meet for the first time at the location and discover a dead, wire-tapped body just as the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrive and surround the duo. Agent Wyler finds Cash's backup Walther PPK with attached suppressor on the floor and arrests them. At their murder trial, Tango and Cash are incriminated by an audio tape; verified in court by Skinner, an audio expert, it appears to reveal them shooting the undercover FBI agent after discussing a drug purchase. With the evidence stacked against them, they plead no contest to a lesser charge in exchange for reduced sentences in a minimum-security prison; instead, they get transported to a maximum-security prison and are housed with many of the criminals they had each arrested.