The Warriors (1979)

The Warriors (1979)

November 09, 2008

On Demand, Seattle, WA

** ½ / ****

By Scott Muoio

1979 cult film The Warriors is laughable. Unfortunately, it’s not laughable in a funny or amusing way. It has a clever premise, a group of gang “boppers” traveling home from The Bronx to Coney Island with every New York City gang hot on their trail and determined to “waste” them, but rather than excite, stir our intellect, or reflect on anything meaningful or worthwhile it is instead a dopey phony exercise in fake tough machismo and a ludicrous display of inorganic film making that thinks it is believable and poignant when it is anything but.

Based on the Sol Yurick novel of the same name, the film is written and directed by Walter Hill with the straightest face possible. What are its intentions and how we are supposed to react, I have no idea. What I do know is that The Warriors is neither a good film nor a very enjoyable oddity. Its various gangs resemble actors in wardrobe rather than street tough thugs, the street and subway sets are barren save for those involved in the immediate action of the film, and its dialogue explains exactly what we’re wondering exactly when we’re wondering it as it desperately tries to being crude and down with street culture.

The movie’s overbearing late 1970s aesthetic also rubs me the wrong way. Where a few years later an ‘80s film would be willing to laugh at itself while maintaining its share of serious grit, Hill seems to find nothing even remotely giggle worthy about his male model warriors prancing around in skin tight jeans and silly leather vests with nothing underneath. Nor is it amusing to Hill that one of the gangs dresses in over-alls like a hayseed mafia, another paints their faces while sporting baseball uniforms and wielding wooden bats, and yet another gets told what to do by a rail thin young gal in a pink unitard and whose relationship to the gang I still can’t figure out. Maybe this type of realistic ignorance worked to a late ‘70s crowd, but I’m not buying it.

Beyond these annoyances, the film also features a pair of misguided attempts at integrating females into the story. One involves a rough and tumble tag-a-long (Deborah Van Valkenburgh as the aforementioned unitard gal), the other an all-female gang named The Lizzies. Unfortunately, both the girl and the gang bear the ingratiating trait of being floozies who are willing take on anyone with a pulse. Russ Meyer’s superwomen, buxom babes who took sex when they wanted it and beat the hell out of dudes when they felt like it, these women are not and I doubt feminists will be leaping to their cause anytime soon.

Despite its immense flaws the film is not without its highlights. The racially diverse, colorful assemblage of gangs at the films onset is a visually appealing introduction to the film. Sadly, however, once the gangs get isolated their one-dimensional silliness makes them neither menacing or interesting.

The well-shot action scenes also bring some needed excitement to the silliness. Unfortunately, even these dynamic scenes carry the same unnatural feel as the rest of the film diminishing the weight of the The Warriors effort to get home alive while reminding us how ridiculously tedious the hurdles standing in their way have become. After a while one confrontation blends into the next as we desperately await some kind of big lesson, bold conclusion, or bone-jarring final climax that never comes.

Between its colorful gangs, hard and fast shoot ‘em up silliness, and unique yet simple story, I can understand why The Warriors leaped to cult status. To me, however, it isn’t nearly as exciting as its hype and I think those who love it love what they think they remember rather than what is really there. Throw in the lack of moral, humour, or clever embellishment and my verdict is clear: this is a movie whose execution does almost nothing to enhance its simple yet intriguing initial premise. A shame, really, that something that could have been awesome is instead fairly average.

With a re-make scheduled for 2010, The Warriors just might be that rare breed of film that benefits from a modern sheen. Soon enough we’ll find out.