Netflix pick for 4/1/13 – ‘The Warriors’

I just recently republished my original book-to-film adaptation analysis of the great “The Warriors,” when lo and behold, on the most recent episode of Cinema Crespodiso (available here), the completely random Netflix Pick of the Week turned out to be “The Warriors!” So here we go!

From 1979, “The Warriors” is about a a Coney Island street gang getting framed for the murder of the biggest gang leader in all of New York City, and having to fight their way back home through about half a dozen other gangs, varying in numbers, style and competency. Walter Hill is a tough guy director, often making movies about tough guys having to do tough things or at least act tough, movies like “Southern Comfort” and “48 Hrs” and the recent “Bullet to the Head.” So while this movie does has a slightly cartoony feel thanks to some of the gangs’ outfits (a cartoony effect Hill claimed was intentional, stating that he wanted to treat this movie like a comic book story), it is still pretty gritty and intense at times, thanks in large part to being filmed not only on the streets of New York City, but late 1970s New York City, which is completely different from the city today, as it exuded menace and danger at every lonely street corner and in every darkened doorway.

So get in this time machine with us and let’s travel back to 1979 NYC, a time and place in which the idea of a roving gang of psychopaths with painted faces dressed in baseball uniforms and attacking people with bats did not seem so far fetched at all.

Click here to watch “The Warriors” on the Netflix Instant Watch.