So I finally got round to watching "The Warriors," in the new DVD version. I gather that more than a few fans are annoyed by some of the deviations from the original version of the film. Not having seen it, I can't speak to that. I somehow missed it when it was first released (maybe because I was eight) and never caught it on subsequent cable showings or on video till now.
But even though I'd never seen it before, lines from it have become so iconic that it's almost like "deja vu all over again." One of my favorite bands, Pop Will Eat Itself, took a title, hook, and key samples for one of their greatest singles, "Can U Dig It?" wholesale from this film. And on MST3K, Tom Servo was not averse to throwing in a little "Waarrioors...come out to plaa-aaaay!" where appropriate.
First and probably foremost, it's a great-looking movie. Director Walter Hill says many times, in one of the better documentary-retrospectives I've seen on a DVD, that he was going for a "comic book" look.
Whenever I hear this I cringe a little inside, because I fear it's going to be used to excuse a lack of depth, clever plotting, and characterization, but as presented here it plays well. This is not to say that "The Warriors" has depth, clever plotting, and characterization (it's kind of a what-you-see-is-what-you-get sort of picture).
But it's pitch-perfect in evoking the Marvel comic books of the '70s. I read a review on Amazon where someone described the performances as "wooden yet overwrought," which in this film's context is appropriate, and not the backhanded complement it may appear.
Comic book heroes and heroines don't have to be wholly believable...just enough so that we'll suspend our disbelief at the rest. And that's what the cast of this movie is. Real enough...but not too real.
If they weren't real enough, it'd be hard to get caught up in their momentum (and this film is nothing if not breathless pace), because we wouldn't care at all. But if they were too real, they'd be jarringly out-of-place in what Harlan Ellison called, probably rightly, "...an astonishing excercise in surrealism masquerading as a gang rumble flick."
Many clips from the film (especially in the fight scenes) already look like they could be made into comic book panels-and it probably wasn't necessary to "gild the lily" in this new cut. This is done by including periodic scene transitions where the action freezes, is converted to comic-style drawing, we move along a few "panels" to a new, drawn scene before returning to live action.
For me, this was annoying but not lethal, based on what I read it seems to be one of the things that annoys fans of the old version most.
The film is let down for me only by probably-too-PC-for-my-own-good qualms about the race elements, and an unsatisfying payoff, which I won't give away for those of you who haven’t seen either version.
Other that that, it's nearly excellent. Killer, and now retro, synth-rock score, too; sounded like a mix between Queen's score for "Flash Gordon"-their best work and I won't hear otherwise-and early OMD.
2 comments:
Loved the Warriors when it first came out. But does anyone remember that it was based on the greek story Anabasis? They make great literary comparisons.
Walter Hill sure does-the new version starts with a prologue that makes the basis explicit.
Of course, it also sets up why the payoff is so weak, but that's another post.
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