Street life... The Warriors (1979)

 

Here’s another film that I first saw in the old ABC in Lime Street Liverpool and as an impressionable teenager along with a group of similar classmates just after A Levels. I’ve only seen it once since, twenty-five years ago, late night on holiday in Devon but it’s left its mark and so much still feels fresh and threatening. On leaving the cinema we felt uplifted by this unlikely but visceral thriller which was all too relatable in a city where we always had to watch ourselves out of area and walking the dark streets after hours.

It's a small leap of the imagination to transpose Liverpool teenage street paranoia to New York especially in the dystopian near future which, finally, we seem to be entering. Director Walter Hill, who co-adapted with David Shaber from Sol Yurick’s 1965 novel of the same name, always had in mind that the gang of Warriors was similar in spirit to the Greek heroes of Xenophon’s Anabasis. In this tale – based on events the writer “witnessed” - an army of mercenaries fighting for Cyrus the Younger in his attempt to take the throne of Persia. Cyrus is killed and the Greeks had to fight their way to safety across hundreds of miles of Persian territory.

In Hill’s 2005 Director’s Cut – which I watched – he provides a voice over about these events and there are also linking animations which make the adventure seem like a comic book. I’m not sure this adds much to the original tale but the story continued in a comic book written by Erik Henriksen in 2009. Here Hill’s vision shows some similarities with Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons Watchmen almost 20 years after that limited series and four before Zac Snyder would film it mixing comic animation and live action.

Anyway… the storyline is as epic as it is timeless and resonated with the gangs of New York some of whom not only provided some of the extras in the film but also flocked to see the results crossing territories and bumping into their competitors in a series of violent collisions. The presence of these gangs adds an unsettling frisson to a film packed with convincing fight sequences with Hill training his actors to fight almost as well as the local stunt men.

The set was tense as filming had to take place on the real streets of New York City between the daylight hours with the sun only shining on the climactic final sequence. The impact of this natural darkness adds so much visceral tension to the performances and also, instinctively, the way we watch the film. There’s no comparison between The Warriors fighting to get back to Coney Island on the dwindling hours subway and our catching the last bus home after a night in Liverpool’s dark alleyways but we could feel it if the Kirkby lads got on and we had half an hour of high spirits to contend with.

In this near future The Warriors are one of hundreds of gangs that have developed across New York in the absence of opportunity and enough police to steady the streets. They have so much power if only they could stop fighting each other and create a single force and this is the pitch that Cyrus (Roger Hill) the leader of the Gramercy Riffs, the biggest gang, makes in a special meeting in the Bronx with all the biggest gangs. The maths is on their side, they vastly outnumber the police and if they were to join together they could run the city. 

This is met with applause as the penny drops but there’s one gang definitely against the proposal and their leader, Luther (the marvellously wired and unsettling David Patrick Kelly) shoots Cyrus dead and, after being spotted by one of The Warriors, pins the blame on them as the police arrive and chaos ensues. The Warriors make good their escape but soon they realise that every gang in New York is looking to bring them down.

It's a pure concept, the pointless nihilism of Luther being used to pin the greatest injustice onto the Coney Island outfit and, after their leader Cleon (super-cool, Dorsey Wright) is lost in quick retribution it’s left to Swan (handsome, taciturn, highly-focused Michael Beck), to pull his troop together for the sake of their lives.  He faces the most backchat from the impulsive Ajax (an edgily impertinent, James Remar) but the seven remaining men are all facing the fight of their lives to avoid the other gangs and make the trains that will take them to safety a world away in the former Playground of the World” … 

The baseball bat wielding Turnbill ACs, are the first to try and catch the gang but they manage to just about lose them as the subway. Throughout the long night messages are relayed in street slang code from a largely unseen female DJ (Lynne Thigpen) whose relaxed tone is even more threatening given the seeming inevitability of their fate in this long dark night of the D Train, a two-hour journey from the Bronx to Coney in normal times but confused by night-time running and the inevitable distractions. For fans of the New York subway system this is one of The Great films!

Hill made the most of the "extreme narrative simplicity and stripped-down quality of the script…” and despite the realism, he always wanted to divide the film into comic-book style chapters with each "starting with a splash panel" as in the Director’s Cut. Other things that did not go to plan was the casting of the up-and-coming Thomas G. Waites as Fox, a more natural challenger for Swan’s supremacy. Waites and Fox clashed so much that the director had the character killed off in the gang’s subway battle with the police.

Away from New York’s finest, the gang now runs into The Orphans who, in spite of the prompting of the leader’s girl, Mercy (Deborah Van Valkenburgh) fail to put up much of a challenge to the gang as Swan frightens them off with a Molotov cocktail. Mercy follows the Warriors and starts to become attached to Swan. The group get split with Swan, Ajax, Snow (Brian Tyler), and Cowboy (Tom McKitterick) escaping via a park where Ajax’s self-control places him in danger with a City Siren who may not be what she seems (Mercedes Ruehl who decades later plays Frasier Crane’s boss in the sitcom!).

Meanwhile Cochise (David Harris), Vermin (Terry Michos) and a more reticent Rembrandt (Marcelino Sánchez) are similarly distracted by an all-girl gang called The Lizzies… I think you can work out where that one’s going!

Dusty Video Rating: The Warriors is still an epic tale and one of the great night films of New York along with the likes of After Hours and, indeed, Escape from New York. The pace is unrelenting from Hill and his players all look to have that edginess you find when it’s late, there’s a long way till sunrise and the certainty of daytime is lost in darkness. There are threats round every corner and they are always outnumbered.

Ultimately it’s a film about perseverance and leadership with some warriors falling and others rising to the challenge. It also leaves the characters’ stories wide open and you wonder what will happen to The Warriors in the time ahead whilst sensing they can cope with anything.

There’s also a wonderfully gritty score from Barry De Vorzon using a rock band and synthesisers in ways that were not seen in many films of this time but which were perhaps more familiar with the audiences. The Directors Cut issues include a welter of extras including here an appreciation of the score from film composer Neil Brand which explains how De Vorzon achieves his exceptional atmospherics.

You can order from all the usual places… it’s always time to come out to play with The Warriors.