Review of The Warriors (1979) by Dillinger P — 19 May 2015

The opening moments to a film are pivotal, it sets the mood, gears you up for what your about to witness and hopefully excites. As The Warriors opening title sequence, rams style, unique visuals and ferocious score, you'd be forgiven for getting all hyped up for what, looks like its essentially going to be a jacked up, violent, survival flick.

Which is why by the time the ending credits roll, you cant help but feel like either you fell asleep half way and or someone just stole a good portion of the movie and never told anyone. In an alternate state of New York, gangs of visually flamboyant looking thugs, rule their territories.

One night, a visionary called Cyrus, calls all the gangs together, to invoke a truce, so that the factions can unite and take over New York, there is only one problem, Someone decides to assassinate Cyrus mid speech and frame the gang called "The Warriors", essentially turning a state wide man hunt on the small group of 8, as they rush back to Coney Island, hopefully in one piece.

Its a fantastic premise, its simple and effective, it bolsters many an opportunity to go absolutely bonkers, massive street brawls, double crosses, brilliant stunt work, tension filled will they make it moments.

And although the film tries to achieve this, it falls so short on its promise that the complete deflation at the end it just heart braking. The Warriors feels like it should have been directed by John Carpenter, in fact from the outside, you'd be fooled into thinking he did, Carpenter would understand the audience expectation and deliver with tension and equal measures of brutality.

However Walter Hill, just has a film that continually tells us all hell is about to break loose and never really does. The acting is pitiful, even for a cult classic B movie. There are a few familiar faces that shine through the dirt, but that's hardly saying anything when the script is woeful and the acting is atrocious.

Names of characters? dont even bother, dont even bother with the names of factions, the only one you will remember name wise is the Warriors or at best The Orphans, mainly because an obscure amount of time is spent on this segment.

Everyone else will just be those weird looking guys, or those really cool mother fuckers that you thought were going to tear the streets apart and fall like dominoes, at the slightest breath forced in their direction.

One case in point is a gang of Baseball Bat fanatics, who wear war make-up and carry bats and the set up is brilliant, the film really makes you go, oh these guys are going to kick the shit out the warriors, how will they survive? The warriors survive because most of the Baseball nuts just stand about until one of them gets knocked down.

It's like playing a primitive computer game, engaging in a fight with one enemy before moving to the next, until the entire faction is gone. The film is also extremely heavy on the insulting side, riddled with gender politics, although it is nice to see a strong group of females, not so good to see them whoring themselves out in order to attack, but at least the sentiment is there.

You dont really feel for the warriors, you dont really feel for anybody, apart from the poor girl that keeps getting called a slut for no reason what so ever the entire movie, before becoming a love interest? Yes I get it, these gangs are horrible and cause havok and are sexist, racist and just about every other "Ist" you can think of, but its written in such a passive way and performed even more passively that you cant help but feel that was just the norm.

As if the writer had no problems what so ever writing these things onto paper. But for all the flack the film generates, it also generates some extremely brilliant moments, which in turn made it the classic it is today.

The look and feel are brilliant, New York feels like a wasteland, that the police cant even control, I love the different factions with their outfits, the music is tremendous and when the fights do get going, eventually, it raises a pulse.

The locations are great, the practical effects are well done, if you were to use it as a back drop for a musical performance it would be a delight, a visual feast, sadly the writing, direction and piss poor acting, really cripple what should have been a fuckin nuclear bomb going off.

A fun miss fire.