The Warriors (1979)
Directed by Walter Hill
Prominent gang leader Cyrus calls a meeting of New York's gangs to set aside their turf wars and take over the city. At the meeting, a rival leader kills Cyrus, but a Coney Island gang called the Warriors is wrongly blamed for Cyrus' death. Before you know it, the cops and every gangbanger in town is hot on the Warriors' trail.
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What it was at the time was, ironically, a more realistic take on gangs compared to the likes of 1961’s West Side Story, a simplistic narrative with a narrow focus told in the vein of a comic book or pulp novel.
But in spite of the film taking a more West Side Story approach to depicting gang violence as opposed to Gangs Of New York , there is something compelling about these urban kids not just engaging in a fight for their survival but the inherent tragedy when it appears that not all of them will make it.
"Clockwork Orange and West Side Story," he states succinctly.
Già segnalatosi negli anni precedenti con L’eroe della Strada e Driver l’imprendibile , di essenziale eleganza formale in quel loro disegno rigorosamente deterministico di personaggi dalla «vita violenta», il regista giungeva infine nel 1979 alla sua opera più compiuta e più matura, senza nulla perdere di quella sua strenua riflessione sulla violenza, qui emblematizzata in moduli narrativi che ora assumono il ritmo e i toni di un drammatico musical (quasi un aggiornato West Side Story , per intenderci), ora le asprezze realistiche di un torvo scorcio di ‘notti brave’ (completamente estraneo peraltro alla compiaciuta ambiguità dell’ Arancia meccanica di Stanley Kubrick).
Tramite il raduno Hill delinea la visione di una società utopica, nella quale le bande di strada possano realmente autogovernare nella città di New York – quantomeno nel suburbano – in una convivenza pacifica; ponendosi così come un’organizzazione parastatale figlia del suo periodo generazionale, dei suoi respiri insurrezionali e di un decennio cinematografico apertosi con Zabriskie Point (1970) di Michelangelo Antonioni che trova in I guerrieri della notte la sua degna, violenta e nichilistica chiusura – un inno al caos laddove non arriva l’autorità statale.
Pauline Kael of The New Yorker once wrote, “ The Warriors is a real moviemaker’s movie: it has in visual terms the kind of impact that ‘Rock Around the Clock’ did behind the titles of Blackboard Jungle .”
This gave the film an undeserved reputation for ultra violence, but this is not A Clockwork Orange , it's not even Blackboard Jungle or Over The Edge .
Poverty, the disposable role of women, the power and interference of the media (as demonstrated through a female radio DJ’s narration of the Warriors’ movements across the city, which is quite reminiscent of Wolfman Jack’s announcements in “American Graffiti”), and restrictive social circles make for interesting nemeses as well, though their contributions to the commentary on gang life take a backseat to the cinematic knifing, Molotov cocktails, gun-brandishing seductresses, and asides for sex with random chicks.
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They’re grand backdrops to the action sequences, featuring scuffles almost as sinister as the droog fracases in “A Clockwork Orange,” though more serious in choreography and not tinged with the same degree of weirdness (or Beethoven).
This gave the film an undeserved reputation for ultra violence, but this is not A Clockwork Orange , it's not even Blackboard Jungle or Over The Edge .
Ik moest tijdens ’t kijken van The Warriors om verschillende redenen ook denken aan films als A Clockwork Orange en Mad Max , maar ook kort even aan The Lost Boys .
Much like Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch , there is a moral compass that transcends traditional ethics.
It's a short trip to Guide becoming a shot of religion like Coppola's The Outsiders (a film to which it bears a lot more resemblance than it does to the oft-cited Mean Streets ): a blue trip down a melancholy byway.
Hill, who was a screenwriter before directing his first film, "Hard Times," with Charles Bronson, can be exasperating in his fidelity to genre-movie conventions — last year, he worked so hard at making a film noir out of "The Driver" that he came up with film gris.
Walter Hill's direction here is of a piece with his previous work in Hard Times and The Driver.
Having earned industry respect with his scripts for Hicky and Boggs (1972) and The Getaway (also 1972, and directed by Sam Peckinpah), The Thief Who Came to Dinner (1973), The MacKintosh Man (1973) and The Drowning Pool (1975), he made his mark as a director with the stylish brutality of Hard Times (1975) and the existential crime thriller The Driver (1978), but it was The Warriors that really brought him to international attention.
Gordon had produced Hill’s two films – Hard Times and The Driver – and was prepping a western Hill had written with Roger Spottiswoode called The Last Gun .
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Director Walter Hill’s action-thriller, now a cult favorite, shares similarities with his previous The Driver (1978) and was partly inspired by “Anabasis”, the classical Greek epic.
Directed by Walter Hill (“The Driver,” “Southern Comfort,” “48 Hrs.”), who would predominantly helm adventure flicks (this was only his third time in the director’s chair), “The Warriors” manages exciting action as capably as inescapable notes on socioeconomic politics (based on Sol Yurick’s novel) – bravely offering no solution other than making it through the night alive.
Hill, who was a screenwriter before directing his first film, "Hard Times," with Charles Bronson, can be exasperating in his fidelity to genre-movie conventions — last year, he worked so hard at making a film noir out of "The Driver" that he came up with film gris.
Walter Hill's direction here is of a piece with his previous work in Hard Times and The Driver.
Director Walter Hill (“Streets of Fire”/”The Driver”/”48 Hours”) swings for the fences and ends up on second base with a very 1970s’ looking film that shuns reality to shoot for a fantasy depiction of gangs.
Having earned industry respect with his scripts for Hicky and Boggs (1972) and The Getaway (also 1972, and directed by Sam Peckinpah), The Thief Who Came to Dinner (1973), The MacKintosh Man (1973) and The Drowning Pool (1975), he made his mark as a director with the stylish brutality of Hard Times (1975) and the existential crime thriller The Driver (1978), but it was The Warriors that really brought him to international attention.