The Warriors – Can You Dig It?
Walter Hill manages to create a ‘near future dystopia’ of New York City in this movie from 1979 that gives us an excellent action adventure set in an environment of urban decay.
The Warriors are one of many overly colorful street gangs plaguing the streets of New York City. Their ‘turf’ is Coney Island, their home, their place of safety from the other gangs. The ‘Grammercy Riffs’, the biggest gang in the city and call a truce with all the gangs so a meeting can take place between them all at Van Cortlandt Park. Cyrus, leader of the Riffs has a plan to get all the gangs to work together to control the streets. The plan goes south when Cyrus is shot and the blame is placed firmly on The Warriors. Now, every gang in the city is after The Warriors as they try to ‘bop’ their way back to Coney.
There is something special about this movie. The opening scene of the Big Wheel lit up at Coney Island does a great job at setting the seen. A glimmer of light in a dark film. This movie is shot mainly at night and running around the streets does not offer a lot of light. An urban setting decayed over time, although not date of when the movie is set it is clearly intended to fall into the “Sometime in the near future”. But color is splashed throughout the film by the gangs themselves each with their own uniform of fantastic colors and in many cases, painted faces. The contrasting color sets extremely well with me and looks even better in this modern age on Blu-Ray, it almost turns the movie into an urban fantasy.
This movie is seen today as a cult classic, but when it was first released it did garner a lot of controversy. The movie was linked to violence and vandalism, with three people being killed. Movie theaters were offered the chance to pull the movie if they wished.
Back to the movie.
The Warriors are all cast extremely well and bring something unique to the movie. Michael Beck who played Swan was particularly strong, but my favorite character was the ‘hot head’ Ajax. James Remar who played Ajax did a fine job of playing the most complex character of the Warriors. His mind was easily side-tracked which eventually led to his downfall in the movie, but his conflict with Swan was well played out. The tension was very believable and added something extra to the already difficult situation. Some of the other Warriors such as Vermin, Snow and Cowboy don’t get as much screen time and you don’t get to know them as well as you would have liked, but I suppose a movie of this type, it is not about getting to know the character that much, you are more concerned with them getting back home in one piece. David Patrick Kelly is brilliant as Luther, leader of The Rogues. He seems to be able to play that crazy character so well.
There are so many great moments in this movie that it is hard to pick out a highlight, but one of my favorites has to be the Baseball Furies chasing four members of The Warriors through the park, and the battle that follows. The Baseball Furies are genuinely scary people, I couldn’t think of anything worse than being chase through a park in the dark at night off the Furies.
Another favorite scene is when The Warriors are introduced to The Lizzies and they are lured back to their place where they hang out, only to discover they have been lured into a trap. It is a real change of pace from what we have been seeing up to that point and you begin to feel like something is finally going their way until it all unravels and chaos ensues.
It is hard to think of anything negative about this movie. It is one of my favorites so it will always be hard to say something negative about it, but I think the lack of screen-time that some of the characters get leave you feeling a little underwhelmed when something bad happens to them. For example, Cleon is barely in the movie before we meet his fate in the movie, so we don’t really understand the consequence of that all too well. Fox, another member of The Warriors has a sticky end at the train platform, but we don’t really know that much about him to care after the initial shock of what happens.
However, these are all minor grievances for a movie I would gladly place in my Top 10. I cannot recommend this movie enough to anyone who has yet to see it. Fans of post apocalyptic or dark futuristic movies would particularly enjoy this I feel. This is a cult classic in every sense of the word and I would highly suggest a Blu-Ray viewing if you get the opportunity to really appreciate some of those amazing visuals.
