I just sat down and watched The Warriors, a 1979 film set in an anarchic New York City where gangs outnumber cops three-to-one, and the eponymous gang struggles to make it back to their turf in Coney Island after they are framed for killing a would-be Gangster Messiah. Cyrus.
On one hand, the film attempts to portray the dystopian feel of New York in the 70s - the sense that no one is safe from crime, and the police are only there to track you down and beat you with nightsticks. Our Warriors, who function as a single protagonist, even if they do get split up from time to time, are not necessarily good guys. They're a gang, and they act like a gang (albeit a small one.) The point is not that these are a bunch of model citizens fleeing rabid criminals - it's that they are just trying to survive an entire city sent against them.
The various gangs in the Warriors often skew toward the ridiculous. The Baseball Furies, for example, are all dressed in Yankees uniforms (so you know they're evil!) and wearing makeup in the style of KISS. For the most part, the film is almost episodic, having the Warriors travel from one gang's territory to the next, encountering various levels of resistance. All the while, the Rogues, whose leader was the one who actually killed Cyrus, search for them while Cyrus' gang, the Riffs (which is more of a paramilitary group than a street gang) coordinates the hunt for the people they think killed Cyrus.
I'll admit I've lived a relatively sheltered life, and I've grown up in areas where "gangs" of young people would be more laughable than threatening. For these people, though, there does not seem to be an alternative. The gang is your family and your sole support structure. The Warriors may not be "good" guys, but they're as honest as one can expect, and only want to get home safe.
The New York where I went to college was a much safer place - the 90s led to a huge reduction in street crime, and in Post-9/11 Manhattan, people might look at you funny if you seemed Middle Eastern (I do not,) but for the most part people were relatively friendly and gave you space. Yet I am also aware of the state that New York was in through the 70s and 80s, and this movie was made right smack dab in the middle of that era.
Honestly, even though I think the film tapped into the zeitgeist of the era, I don't know if I'd classify it as a "good" movie. The sole female character who appears in more than one of the vignettes (apart from the Tokyo Rose-like DJ) is a little ill-defined, except that we can perhaps sense that she has the same lost, nihilistic despair the drives the guys into gangs, but does not even have that outlet, capable only of watching (I assume) her brother mis-manage his somewhat pathetic gang, the Orphans. She's not alone in this - most of the characters are a bit generic, a hazard of making a story with a group protagonist.
One interesting segment is when three of the Warriors are approached by a group of women and invited back to their apartment. The women attempt to seduce them, and succeed with all but the youngest member of the gang, Rembrandt, only to reveal that they are actually only trying to kill the Warriors and earn favor with the Riffs like the other gangs.
The all-girl gang, revealed to be the "Lizzies," gives off a strong lesbian vibe, even though it is never stated explicitly (there is a long take of two of the women dancing sensuously with one another, so the implication is pretty clear at least to me.) Attitudes toward homosexuality, both male and female, have generally shifted considerably since 1979. Today, it seems the bigger issue for the portrayal of lesbians in fiction is the male gaze, co-opting female homosexuality as entertainment for men. If a story like this were made today, one would think that as Rembrandt notices the increasingly lesbian vibe among the women, he would be more excited to be around them, rather than less-so (and these are, for the most part, not particularly "butch" lesbians either.)
So are the Lizzies a plot element of female empowerment, punishing the Warriors for never considering that women could be a threat to them? Or are they meant as a new level of horror - that in this city of moral decay even pretty women are man-hating killers?
I may not find myself racing to the nearest DVD store to buy a copy, but I do get a sense that this film captured a certain attitude and aesthetic that defined its era. There's value in that as a cultural artifact, and as a work of art.
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