Review of The Warriors (1979) by Dave C — 14 Apr 2010

The Warriors is a rare, incredible piece of cinema that's full of imagination and enjoyable as all hell.

At it's core, The Warriors is an action thriller taking place in a dystopian New York City. Gangs flourish and out-number the police force 3 to 1. The gangs are all highly stylized and interesting, each one almost having their own theme. There's the demented Baseball Furies gang, the poor, cowardly Orphans, and of course, The Warriors. The movie opens up with hundreds of these gangs gathering in the Bronx for a meeting about a truce, led by Riffs' leader Cyrus, who declares that uniting the gangs would allow the gangs to over-run the city. Revolution is at hand.

And then Cyrus gets shot by some stupid dickhead from The Rogues, and all hell breaks loose. When The Warriors are blamed for it by that very same dickhead, their long journey back to Coney Island gets a whole lot more interesting.

First and foremost, I just love how simple and classic the story is. A gang of modern day warriors is wrongly accused of committing murder against who might as well have been the leader of all gangs; the president. Now, with the hundreds of other gangs looking for them, they need to traverse through enemy territory in order to get from The Bronx all the way back home to their turf in Coney Island. All this while trying to avoid the murderous intents of every other gang in NYC who think they committed the murder.

Their journey is photographed and directed with the brushstrokes of a real artist. With the culty nature of this film, I figured it would be kind of a shoddy production, cutting corners here and there and really screaming out that they have a low budget. Not the case here. The opening scene in the park with Cyrus alone is a terrific accomplishment, bringing hundreds of different gang members together, each of them wearing their own unique colors and outfits. It's a really awe-inspiring sight seeing all those people together.

The movie's gaps are bridged incredibly well with the use of comic book panels that move from one panel to the next every now and then. It gives the breaks in the action some unique flair that I thought were handled incredibly well. The action scenes are awesome. The fights are fun and at times, brutal. There's one particular fight in a subway station towards the end that was just awesome.

On the surface the movie sounds pretty standard, but I got a strange feeling from it the whole time. The feel I got from The Warriors was that this whole world was the creation of a child's imagination during a schoolyard game. Imagine playing a game like this on the school yard with your friends. A bunch of rival gangs who control different parts of the schoolyard. Imagine how, as a child, you'd picture yourself as a rough tough gang member. You wouldn't picture yourself as a child, you'd picture yourself as a tough adult.

That's the feel I got from this movie. Deadly serious, but hokey and skewed enough for it to be from the perspective of a young, imaginative group of kids. What is serious here is what a child thinks is serious. Even down to the minutiae of this world. There are barely any adults in New York City except for the cops. The city is a ghost town. The dialogue is mostly campy and a little childish at times, especially from some of the gang members. One of the gangs is a twisted Baseball team with face-paint on. The whole concept just SCREAMS lighthearted imagination despite how dark the movie's tone is. It's just a cool concept in general, and I loved how utterly immersed I was in this world pretty much instantly.

To say that I loved The Warriors would be an understatement. I was blown away by this film. It's certainly not the smartest film, it doesn't have much to say, and the characters are all cool as hell despite being pretty flat. But the sheer amount of imagination at work here is otherworldly. They create a unique world within a familiar world, fusing a classic adventure tale with post-modern sensibilities. It's just plain brilliant.