The Warriors

Director: Walter Hill, Walter Hill, Walter Hill

1979 / 93min / 35mm

“Waaarriors! Come out and play-ay!” Falsely accused of responsibility for the assassination of New York’s most powerful ganglord during a citywide summit in the Bronx’s Van Cortlandt Park, Swan (Michael Beck) and his fellow Warriors now have to fight their way back, block by block and mano a mano, to the safe shores of their Coney Island turf. The film’s knuckle-busting action choreography and its vision of NYC as a coliseum-like proving grounds for epic heroism—its source, at a distance, is Xenophon’s 4th century BC Anabasis—are delectable, but its greatness lies in its attention to character, how it lets us see a crew of provincial Brooklynites gradually discovering they’re the toughest dudes in town.