This week we watched The Warriors, an epic (adjective and noun) adventure about gangs in New York City, specifically the Warriors. Inspired by the book by Sol Yurick; the film begins with a gathering organized by Cyrus, leader of the Gramercy Riffs who happen to be the most powerful gang in the city, to coalesce the gangs of New York into a community so powerful that even the police won’t be able to oppose them. But not everyone is willing to switch from their local-organizations, Cyrus is then assassinated by Luther who then, to cover his own group the Rogues, frames the Warriors for Cyrus’s death. All Hell breaks loose, this is the worst possible scenario; not only have all of NYC’s gangs left their home turfs to gather at a meeting meant to unite them, but now the city-wide truce has been broken and all fingers, baseball bats and chains in this case, point to the Warriors to blame. The rest of the movie follows the Warriors trek back to Coney Island filled with battles, love, and smart-ass remarks. Ultimately the Rogues get what they deserve, and the Warriors make it back to Coney Island but not after losing three of their members: two to death and one to the police.

What’s so interesting about the Warriors is that it provides an image of gang relations within New York City in a way that also completely separates it from actual gang violence. It glamorizes it through fun chase scenes, funky costumes, and chooses more noble forms of fighting; only one death is caused by a gun and Luther appears to hide behind it. Although The Warriors is a romanticized version of New York City’s gang life, there were only two instances where civilians were involved, but the film’s promotion was received differently. The film’s original poster showed a mass of people staring out at the viewer with a threatening caption that sounded much like Cyrus’s rallying remarks from the film. The Cult Films book describes the outrage caused by the misleading ad, “If this ad did indeed properly reflect the theme of the picture it was promoting, The Warriors could correctly be called an inciteful film – as many outraged citizens assumed it was after an epidemic of violent gang-related incidents broke out around the country inside and near theaters showing the film.” This added to the cult appeal of The Warriors for the negative connotations related to it from the general public and, after watching it, fans defended the film for what it truly is.

The reading from the Cult Films book discusses Sol Yurick’s original story of the Dominators, renamed the Warriors in the movie. I have not read the book but according to Cult Films, the film differs vastly from Yurick’s story to the point that it doesn’t come close to an adaptation of the novel. In Yurick’s novel the youth gang doesn’t have the charm we see in the movie, the book is more of a critique or mockery of a gang trying so hard to be bad. In both, they reference Anabasis the Greek epic by Xenophon, Cult Films points out that

“Film director Walter Hill’s warrior, a youth gang called the Warriors, exhibit characteristics of classical heroes: gallantry, self-pride, loyalty, discipline, resourcefulness, and most of all, the ability to fight. These are characters about which legends are told, epic poems written, movies made.”

It is no mere coincidence that the members of the Warriors are named after heroes in literature and history, the amount of symbolism in this movie shows how well-thought out it is. I had not known of the story of Anabasis before watching the warriors, with a little more research into the Xenophon’s story I learned that the word Anabasis means “a march from the coast to the interior”, much like the Warriors from Coney Island into New York. Xenophon’s story Anabasis is his own recount of a march to Persia to aid Cyrus, the founder of the first Persian empire. Other names that reference Greek warriors are Cleon and Ajax, but names like Cochise and Rembrandt also based on people before them.

I am very fond of The Warriors, the first time I watched it I was surprised at how different it really was from movies I had seen before. Viewing it analytically in this class made it all the better, I have a deeper understanding of the film. The high energy of the film is what gets me, it’s hard not to feel excited watching them run through New York. My favorite scene is definitely the fight scene with the Baseball Furies.