The plot is simplicity itself. A gang from Coney Island called the Warriors gets an invite to attend a massive rally twenty-seven miles away. All the big gangs in the city will be there, including the Riffs, the most powerful band of street thugs in New York. The leader of the Riffs, Cyrus, plans to consolidate the various crews of street criminals under his benevolent rule. Through a mix of charisma and charged oratory-lots of "can you dig it" thrown around for the benefit of the goons-Cyrus brings the crowd to its feet. Unfortunately for him and for the Warriors, Luther (David Patrick Kelly), with his gang called the Rogues, assassinates Cyrus in the middle of his speech. In the resulting chaos the Warriors take the blame for the murder. Even worse, the leader of the Warriors, Cleon (Dorsey Wright) falls in the resulting melee. The rest of the Warriors make a run for it, now with Swan (Michael Beck) leading the gang. Every street thug in the city wants a piece of the Warriors, especially the Riffs. Swan and his crew must make it back to Coney Island before falling prey to the Turnbull AC's, the Lizzies, the Orphans, the Baseball Furies, the Boppers, the Rogues, and a hundred other gangs big and small. Too, the men in blue wish to ask the Warriors a few questions about Cyrus's sudden demise.

The rest of the film recounts the Warriors' journey home. Their efforts center on the subway, but everyone else knows this is the method the hunted crew will take. Every time the Warriors finally get on a train, some incident arises that stops them cold. A fire on the track forces the crew to make their way to the next train on foot, opening them up to the murderous retribution of the other gangs. In one neighborhood, our heroes run up against a "minor league" gang called the Orphans and a mouthy harridan named Mercy (Deborah Van Valkenburgh), and must battle their way free. An encounter with the cops at the subway forces the Warriors to split up. Eventually, a few of the members fall prey to other gangs, to the police, or narrowly escape doom at the hands of knife and gun wielding women. As if things couldn't get worse, a radio disc jockey (Lynne Thigpen) sends out artfully coded messages about the location of the Warriors, thereby urging other thugs to join in the free for all. Will the surviving members of the Warriors get home in the end? And will it really matter if they do?

Xenophon's "Anabasis," the tale of a band of Greeks caught behind Persian lines that had to battle their way back home, forms the basis of Hill's "The Warriors." Everything from naming the king of the gangs Cyrus to the final showdown on the beach comes right out of this ancient Greek text. Most viewers won't know this of course (I didn't at first; I read it somewhere), but would be content to merely sit back and watch the antics unfold. You've got gang members dressed like baseball players with painted faces swinging bats in a park, the leader of the Orphans looks like Eric Bogosian with a hangover, and plot holes run through this movie like subway tunnels. The flaws in "The Warriors" are epic in scope. Why, for instance, doesn't the gang simply take a cab or steal a car and get home in a hurry? Are we to assume that a street gang has no money to hire a driver or the ability to hotwire an automobile? Some hoods these guys are! Too, I always thought New York City is the town that never sleeps. Well, the denizens of the Big Apple snoozed the night away when this film was made. No one appears on the streets, no cars drive by, and no one comes out of their apartment buildings to see what's going on. And if the police are so interested in stopping the Warriors, why not just stop the trains from running? It's to the film's credit that despite myriad plot problems, "The Warriors" still works.

The DVD's picture transfer looks great. Unfortunately, it is a Paramount release with only a trailer as an extra. That's right; no commentary, interviews, behind the scenes fun, or anything else diehard fans would like to see. While I can't say this is my favorite movie, many people swear by it. It's another example of the larger problem with Paramount's DVD department. "The Warriors," despite Paramount's lack of attention, is a must have for fans of cult classics.


The 2005 Unwatchable Director's Crippling DVD - a travesty beyond words.   October 6, 2005
 36 out of 40 found this review helpful

After almost a year of anticipation, the trumpeted "ultimate director's cut" of the beloved 1979 camp classic arrived - and it made George Lucas's belated Star Wars reeditions, with their already proverbially inane "Greedo shooting first" and "Hayden Christensen's head inserted over Sebastian Shaw" changes look like genuine improvements.

Walter Hill just managed to do what medicine previously thought unimaginable - he raped himself. He took a film loved by no less than four generations and murdered it, spat on it and desecrated its corpse.

The "ultimate cut" was turned into an imbecilic quasi-comic book film. Hill destroyed numerous legendary scenes by inserting awkward zooms, awkward cuts at pivotal moments, and - oh, heaven have mercy - freezes and transitions into "stylized" pseudo-comic book panels (actually seemingly made with the emboss filter of Photoshop), often complete with inane "thought bubble" comments.

Case in point - the scene in which the Warriors encounter the Furies. A powerful scene in which tension grows with every second, conveyed only through the actors' eyes and Barry de Vorzon's slowly creeping-up score. At least that is how it looked originally... because in the new version, at the second when the tension just began growing, the "new" film freezes and transforms into an idiotic comic book panel complete with - oh, God, why?!? - an imbecilic bubble comment stating "Holy sh..., the Baseball Furies!". That's how bad the new version is - and this isn't even the worst example.

He shattered the mystery of the ambient "Wonder Wheel" opening by inserting an absolutely unnecessary animate reference to Anabasis before it. And, worst of all, he obliterated the wonderful ending scene. You know it - it is the symbolic take showing the survivors as they walk away from the memory of the night of horror towards the - perhaps hopeful - fresh dawn. I called this scene "the walk to nowhere - somewhere - everywhere".

In the new version, the walk is frozen after a few seconds and spliced into four idiotic comic book panels which then remain on screen. That single change is so wretchedly disgraceful that it defies belief. It is akin to taking, say, the closing scene of "The Godfather" and cutting it at the moment when Michael Corleone sits and thinks, rolling end credits at that moment rather than following it to show the legendary "new don" conclusion.

As the final insult, the DVD does not offer any worthy extras. There are some standard featurettes, but not much beyond that. Hill "does not believe in commentaries", apparently, so this is absent, but doesn't he believe in viewers' rights to watch deleted scenes, either?

It's true that most deleted scenes, in any films, on any DVD, are usually worthless and epitomize drivel - yet even truly bad ones are often included, since any viewer devoted to any film is always interested in seeing extra footage from it. I understand that Walter Hill may feel ashamed of those scenes and does not want them to be viewed even as a curiosity. I would not be surprised if some of them had not even been shot by him (particularly the infamous, awful day opening) - that would make his objection against their inclusion perfectly justified. However, considering that deleted scenes that do make it to existing DVDs as extra features very rarely represent all material that was cut from the film, and taking into account the typical running time of most rough cuts and workprints from late 70s, I would suspect that there was well over half an hour of alternate or additional footage shot - and that would be enough to choose some interesting snippets for the disc. And, Mister Hill... however bad even the worst deleted scene was, it would be practically impossible for it to be worse than the comic book insertions in the Ultimately Disgraceful Cut.

If there is anything worth having in this disc, it's the new cover. It restores the original 1979 poster - the famous gang conclave in the park, with the tagline "They are the armies of the night". (The UK version has this cover, anyway. The US release apparently features an idiotic, oversaturated "Photochop" of a random scene from the film instead - identical to the previously available DVD's cover, but tinted in "angry" MTV red now...)

If that travesty is indeed representative of the concept that Walter Hill originally had in his mind in 1979, then I praise the studio board that changed it into the version that the audience knows and loves.


Sam Shaber speaks for her father   November 8, 1999
 30 out of 31 found this review helpful

I'm David Shaber's daughter, Sam, (Samantha.) My father wrote the screenplay for The Warriors, and I'm hoping this "review" gets printed because he just passed away on Thursday morning, November 4th, of a sudden burst anneurism. With so many "Warriors" fans out there, I thought you would want to know. I'm incredibly warmed by these wonderful comments about this film and I know that if he read them (although he had barely learned how to search the internet before he died) he would chuckle in his lighthearted way and say something like "Oh, well isn't that nice," all-the-while refusing to take credit for any of it. But I know he deserved that credit, having taken a dark, psychological study of gang warfare and infusing it with a classic but clever and topical, good vs. evil story. (And maybe I shouldn't admit it, but my dad didn't really like the baseball face-paint idea which I believe was one of Walter Hill's additions - he thought that was too unrealistic and "Hollywood"...) Anyway, I do hope the movie is re-issued with the extra scenes at some point, and for those real "followers" I just discovered that you can find a complete list of his produced titles on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb.com) if you want to check it out. The Warriors is indeed an AFFECTING picture, whether you love it or hate it. So thanks for your comments and take care, -Sam.


Ultimate Ripoff from Paramount   September 27, 2005
 23 out of 30 found this review helpful

I strongly advise fans of The Warriors to avoid this falsely advertised "Ultimate Director's Cut." What kind of supposed ultimate end-all cut fails to include a director's commentary, but also neglects to include WELL-KNOWN deleted scenes that have been circulating on the internet for years? What kind of ultimate director's cut butchers the original film (here, we have horrid comic book panel intros to various scenes and it looks *bad*) without including the option of viewing the original theatrical release? You know the answer.

Listen up boppers. Paramount is RIPPING YOU OFF because they think you're too stupid to recognize when you're being ripped off.

There are rumors that the region II release will include a director's commentary from Hill (somehow I doubt it though), and also seven deleted scenes. Region II releases are often superior ("They Live" for example), so I urge genuine fans of this film to wait for that one and see if they get it right, because Paramount sure screwed up with this one.

Don't do Paramount the favor of supporting this product, lest they release more like it in the future. Vote with your wallets!