The Film

Cyrus, the leader of the most powerful gang in New York, the Riffs, has called a summit.  All the top gangs send nine unarmed delegates, where Cyrus lays out his vision of an end to gang warfare.  The gangs, who outnumber the cops 3 to 1, will own the streets.  But his Utopian vision is cut down before it can begin when the leader of the Rogues, who has smuggled a gun, takes him down, just as the cops show up to bust up the proceedings. 

Fox, a member of The Warriors, is the only one who sees what happens.  In all the confusion, The Rogues cry out that it was The Warriors, The Warriors shot Cyrus.  Deep in hostile territory, and with all the gangs of New York out for blood, The Warriors must make it home to Coney Island - or die trying!

Why haven't you seen it?

Because you don't watch any moves made more than 10 years ago. The Warriors was actually a modest success when it was released 1979, which is directly attributable to the controversy it created.  Impressionable youths came out of the movie with a taste for the street gang lifestyle, leading to vandalism and at least three deaths involving moviegoers leaving the theater.  Naturally, news of these incidents only increased the public's curiosity about the movie, because people are, on balance, pretty horrible.  The business drummed up by all this violence  would, regrettably, influence an over-eager public relations executive to shoot a small child in the face at the premiere of The Muppet Movie.

Why should you see it?

Watching this movie, I thought to myself: this is why I created the Movie Night Movie Project.

Roger Ebert likes to say that what makes a movie good is not what it is about, but rather how it is about it.  Make sense? No? It means style and heart over plot.  I usually agree with him, even if this philosophy does occasionally result in positive reviews for terrible movies.  And style is what The Warriors has in spades. 

I'm not old enough to speak on it first hand, but I would guess that the New York City imagined in this movie is an exaggeration of urban decay.  Dimly lit, covered in graffiti and garbage, the gritty setting offsets the absurdity of the players.  The Warriors show up in matching jeans, elaborately embroidered leather vests, and bare chests.  But the time they spent waxing each other before the big meeting is nothing compared to the time the other gangs spent doing each others makeup and selecting outfits.   Consider the Furies, who show up in matching baseball outfits and face paint.  Or the Rogues, in careful tattered jean jackets and headbands.  Or the Mimes, who show up dressed as, uh, mimes. It is a stylistic exercise, a movie featuring real violence executed by cartoons painted in broad strokes. 

Despite its gritty dark setting, the movie isn't aiming for realism.  It is an urban fairy tale.  No, fairy tale doesn't feel quite right; fairy tale implies a happy ending, but there is none to be found here.  The Warriors fight to get back home, only to find that they are still going nowhere.