There are major spoilers towards the end of this review, so newcomers to the film may wish to proceed with caution.

I've never really subscribed to the idea that movies shape behaviour, not on a widespread scale and not exclusive of other influences. But I know full well that sometimes, just occasionally, they do. Here are three examples:

 

Ah, The Warriors. Here was a work that was destined for cult status right from the moment it hit the cinemas. It arrived in the UK on a wave of controversy following screenings in the US at which fights had broken out between rival gangs, even, it is alledged, resulting in a number of deaths. Press reaction was divided between condemnations of irresponsibility on the part of the film-makers, and open celebration of the stylish visuals and breathless action. At the time we thought it was the coolest thing we'd seen in years.

As the years passed and my critical distance increased, I still had a soft spot for the film, but for a while it seemed to fade into the fog of cinematic history. It was rarely discussed, I only remember one UK TV screening (in BBC2's Moviedrome slot) and a new generation of movie enthusiasts were looking for other things to get excited about. But then some of this new generation, disillusioned with the more recent Hollywood output, began to rediscover the joys of 1970s American cinema and talked enthusiastically about what they had found. Among them was The Warriors. The thing is, they were really excited about it. This was my first inkling that the film had gone from being a moment in history to a fully fledged cult favourite. Not that this was reflected in the film's first DVD release, of course. But then, it's possible that at this point even Warner Brothers did not realise how big the cult had become.

2005 looks to be a big year for The Warriors. Finally recognising its status, Warner are soon to release the director's cut on DVD, a project director Hill has been actively involved in. On top of that, Rockstar, producers of the phenomenally successful, amoral and ludicrously addictive Grand Theft Auto series are set to release a video game based on the film. A quick look at the trailers on the Rockstar site suggests not just that they intend to be faithful to its look and feel, but that the game designers are all huge fans themselves. With all this renewed interest in the original, the announcement that it is to become yet another casualty of the Hollywood Remake Machine could not have been more poorly timed, set to hit our screens just as everyone has re-familiarised themselves with the original, allowing the negative comparisons to be even more focused and widespread than usual.

The Warriors was an important movie for director Walter Hill. Having found industry respect with his scripts for Hicky and Boggs and The Getaway (both 1972), The Thief Who Came to Dinner (1973), The MacKintosh Man (1973) and The Drowning Pool (1975, with Tracy Keenan Wynn and Lorenzo Semple Jnr.), he made his mark as a director with the stylish brutality of Hard Times (1975) and the existential minimalism of The Driver (1978), but it was The Warriors that provided Hill with the sort of success that really gets you noticed, hitting the headlines and reaching an audience far greater than his two previous directorial outings. It enabled him tailor his next two studio projects - The Long Riders and Southern Comfort - to his own, now heavily Peckinpah-influenced style, before hitting the big time again with 48 Hours and making his mark as a producer and script re-writer with David Giler on a project called Alien. You may have heard of it. He's made some clunkers since, but right now he's working on Deadwood, one of the most noted and controversial successes in recent recent American TV history.

The premise of The Warriors is, on the surface at least, simple enough. On the streets of New York a general truce is called by the city's largest gang, the Gramersy Riffs, who arrange a meeting in the Bronx to which nine unarmed representatives from all of the majors gangs are invited. At this gathering they are addressed by the Riffs' enigmatic leader Cyrus, who suggests that by co-operating rather than fighting, they could effectively take over and run the city. At the height of his speech, however, he is shot dead by the semi-psychotic Luther (a scene-stealingly bonkers turn by David Patrick Kelly), leader of The Renegades, who plants the blame for the killing on the Warriors. Their leader killed by the Riffs and hunted by the police and almost every gang in the city, the surviving Warriors have to dodge and fight their way to the perceived safety of their Coney Island home.

Let's get one thing straight - The Warriors is no gritty portrayal of the New York street gang problem. Its influences are more comic book than social realist, something the opening credits announce with aplomb, as the plot preamble is set up through a series of artificially posed and scripted conversational sound-bites, which are eye-catching intercut with passing subway trains, graffiti-styled credits and shots of a whole range of colourfully dressed gang members making their way to the Big Meeting, all powered along by Barry De Vorzon's driving synth score. This is not drama-documentary, this is cinematic rock 'n' roll.

The comic-book styling extends to all aspects of the film, from the costuming and sometimes ritualistic behaviour of the gangs (the Riffs stand silently in troop-like rows, the Baseball Furies space themselves out in seemingly measured distances in preparation for conflict) to the celebrated punch-ups, which despite involving everything from fists and feet to baseball bats and chains, never produce a drop of blood or a visibly broken limb. It was this very issue that prompted some of the more negative reactions to the film on its release, complaints of irresponsibility for suggesting that a whack in the gut from a baseball bat would do no more than temporarily wind its victim. Thus some of those who had berated film-makers in the past for excessive on-screen blood-letting found themselves in the bizarre position of protesting here that there was none.

This complaint seems particularly absurd given the highly choreographed nature of the fights, providing as they do a clear indication of the film's rejection of realism. The encounter with the Baseball Furies in particular sees one gang member punched so hard he spins in the air, and another thrown a good ten feet by a sharp knee to the face. On top of that the Furies are beaten in part because, in the tradition of kung-fu films (whose star had not yet faded in 1979), the silly buggers stand around and wait until it is their turn to fight rather than rushing their opponents all at once. At one point there are two Warriors beating the crap out of one Fury while his mates stand in the background looking uselessly on. This is the essence of movie fighting, stylised and choreographed like a Bob Fosse dance sequence, created as much in the camera placement and editing as in the physicality of the performers.

Coming out of nowhere this artificiality may well seem absurd, but having established its credentials in the preceding scenes as a stylised action piece, the film does not just absorb the exaggerations, it shines in them. The fight with the Baseball Furies is timed to perfection as a narrative reward, following on as it does from a series of set-backs and minor skirmishes and climaxing a furious chase through Central Park from a murderously determined and tooled-up gang. After 45 minutes of running and outwitting their opponents, this is where the gang take a stand, triggered by the mouthy Ajax's proclamation that "I'm sick of running from these wimps." To Ajax just about everyone is a wimp or in danger of "going faggot," a term that both dates the film and tells us something about Ajax's anxiously defended masculinity. It is with no small sense of irony that Hill has him ultimately defeated not in a fist fight, but by a female undercover cop after he puts animal urges over common sense. In a film in which women always seem to come off second best, it is a notable moment in which this is turned completely around on the very gang member most in need of a lesson in sexual politics. Against the Baseball Furies, though, he shows what he is made of, and with the assistance of compadres Swan and Snowball, finally demonstrates just why the Warriors are worthy of their own film.

In retrospect the initial set-up takes some serious swallowing. The gang truce is unlikely enough, but Cyrus's plan for city-wide domination is hopelessly naïve, relying as it does on the continued co-operation between fiercely territorial gangs and a complete lack of state and the government intervention - presumably the prospect of National Guard or even the armed forces being sent in is something that hadn't occurred to this supposedly great leader. Later, as they near home ground, Vermin says of Cyrus's plan "What crap that was." He's right, but it doesn't matter - the meeting not only kicks off the plot, but also vividly demonstrates the range and variety of gangs that are out there, adding credibility to the seemingly endless barriers that the Warriors encounter in their long journey home. This is emphasised by their early encounter with street punks The Orphans (whose leader bears an uncanny resemblance to a young Tim Burton), who were not even aware of the Big Meeting, suggesting a sub-level of potential conflict that neither the Warriors nor those hunting them had bargained for.

It has to be said that the Warriors are very much a Hollywood version of a street gang, cast in part for their looks and a little too well fed and groomed to convince as Coney Island punks, their racial mix having more to do with audience demographic than street level racial harmony. Of their number only Ajax (enjoyably played by James Remar), initial leader Cleon and the tribally decorated Cochise really look ready to rumble, though as stand-in war chief Swan, Michael Beck is suitable sweaty and athletic. The most unlikely member is the young Rembrandt, as tough as a stick of celery and on board purely to leave the gang's mark wherever they go, something any of them could have done and not been so hopeless in a fight.*

There is also a Homeric nobility to the gang that is reflected specifically in Swan's attitude to those they encounter, negotiating safe passage to avoid a fight they may not win, passing almost puritanical judgment on loud-mouthed gang girl Mercy (a sassy turn by Deborah Van Valkenburg), and yet forbidding her Ajax-proposed rape, in the process maintaining their moral superiority within the gang hierarchy. Later, in one of the film's most quietly effective scenes, he stops Mercy from absently tidying her hair as the two sit across from their middle-class prom date counterparts on a subway train, wordlessly telling her and us that they should wear their bruises and street-level scruff with pride. As they exit the train, he hands Mercy a dropped flower, a romantic gesture disguised as practicality - "I hate to see anything go to waste."

Even the gang's name - The Warriors - with its almost mythic links to clan and tribal fighters of years past, suggests men who are a cut above mere street brawls, a fighting force whose battle across town at times recalls Odysseus's heroic travels in Homer's Odyssey. This link is emphasised when three of their number are distracted by a group of seductive sirens, an all-girl lesbian gang known as The Lizzies (one of whom is clearly far more dangerous than any of their would-be victims). A grippingly staged encounter that steadily builds in intensity to the strains of of Genya Ravan's 'Love is a Fire', it nonetheless ends shabbily when the Warriors escape not through their own wit and fighting skills, but because the Lizzies, instead of running after them, crouch behind their single pistol and groan at their poor shooting.

But such lapses are thankfully few and far between. Once you accept Hill's larger-than-reality approach, this is an often electrifying ride in which all the right narrative buttons are repeatedly pushed with clockmaker's precision. He even manages to top the Baseball Furies fight with a brilliantly staged and edited battle in a station toilet, and delivers a climactic encounter that is in some ways anti-climactic yet feels correct for this story and these characters. That the us-against-all battle comes down to a simple one-one-one between two warlords seems to define what makes the Warriors who they are - the grubby, twitchy Renegades have no honour, no sense of style and no real purpose, and it is only right that Swan should take on a gun with a knife and win, in some ways recalling Toshiro Mifune's sword-against pistol victory in Kurosawa's Yojimbo. As with the gun-weilding samurai in that film, the pistol here is a symbol of dishonour and cowardice, the crutch of a wannabe fighter who is only able to win by cheating his way to victory using superior firepower over traditional fighting skills.

When real justice turns up en masse in the shape of the all-powerful Riffs (who are indeed an intimidating presence), the retribution takes place in the warm glow of daylight and on Warrior turf, at the end of a journey made exclusively in the darkness of night. The Riffs acknowledge the Warriors' achievement respectfully - "You Warriors are good," their leader tells them, "Real good." "The best," Swan replies. By this point, we are in no position to argue.

With the director's cut now waiting in the wings, there is inevitably some speculation over what might be added or removed, and how it will effect the film's at-present fine balance. Two examples to the negative have already been provided by the earlier video release and the BBC screening. On the UK video release, musical copyright issues prompted the replacement of Arnold McCuller's emotive 'Nowhere to Run' - played as a direct message to the fleeing gang by the DJ, who is relaying coded messages on their fate as part of her between-records chatter - with some whiny drivel called 'I am a Warrior', which made no sense at all in the context of the radio announcements that surround it (indeed, it actually reversed the intended message).

When screened on the BBC the original song was thankfully reinstated, but a new sequence had appeared at the start, set in daylight and providing a more literal explanation of the plot to come. It featured Cleon exchanging words with his girlfriend and giving a pep talk to his fellow Warriors (in the process introducing each of them and their role on the mission to the audience), and an exchange between Ajax and Swan that emphasised the former's unhappiness about the whole deal. In some respects this provides day-time bookends for the night-time adventure, but it still feels like a prologue and not part of the film, which did and always should begin with the Coney Island Wonder Wheel at night.

Sound and Vision

Framed at 1.78:1 and anamorphiclly enhanced, this is, on the whole, a very good transfer. Visually The Warriors was always striking for its use of colour against the blackness of night, and this is faithfully reproduced through strong colour reproduction and solid black levels. Detail is often very good. Grain is evident throughout, and does vary a little, but much of the time is barely visible unless to slam your nose against the TV screen. There is one shot - as Swan and Mercy emerge from the subway train at Coney Island - where the picture is in a bit of a state, but this could well be an issue with the source print.

The Dolby 2.0 mono track does the job, but if there ever was a film in need of a 5.1 remix then this is it - the canny combination of sourced tracks and de Vorzon's score really needs to thump out of the speakers in a way it doesn't here. One for the director's cut, then. Clarity, though, is fine.

Extras