Walter Hill
The Warriors

It is unknown in what feverish state of altered consciousness Walter Hill found himself while directing The Warriors, although a multitude of external agents came to the aid of the narcoleptic direction. Firstly, the myth: the film in its lava pool of frictions, convulsions, and drifts is classic in its human genesis and in its migratory flow. The ancient Greek myth of Anabasis by Xenophon revives within the walls of the Big Apple; the film condenses the advance of the Greek army into a compact scale, worthy of a city that promotes a new sense of identity completely independent, every four blocks or so. Like the Greeks, having penetrated too deeply into enemy territory and in retreat towards a safe place that was anticipated to be long and full of pitfalls, so the assassination of the leader maximo of the bands Cyrus-Kiros triggers a land war that extends in the New York metropolitan area, forcing the proudest sons of Coney Island, the Warriors, into a treacherous 30-mile journey across the width of the concrete asylum they call home. That wild and native place, recognized in a famous line from the film as a shithole, but worth the lives spent in the night to return to live there.

The classic revives its boundless existences among the most rebellious alleys of Harlem, among the monochrome darkness of the Bronx, everything begins with that shot, the killing of the leader maximo, the one who had created the illusion of aggregating and integrating all the multicolored wildlife of New York; that gunshot that echoes infinitely from the times of a Fordist America, divide and conquer, even better if you make everything into a stew, even better if each faction is rebellious with the other…

The polychromy marked in the genealogy, a concept that would have been nice to see developed by a genre master like Cronenberg; each gang is recognized with sacred theatricality in its color, in its territorial lived experience, it is tribalism that prevails over urban and civil society. The characteristic feature of all is not in communication, in explanation, in emphasizing concepts and overshadowing others, here only color is given the faculty of speech and the rest is survival.

After the fateful gunshot that throws everyone into disarray, pride fuels much of the conflict that descends upon the Warriors "If we wear our colors out here, there's no way to hide", warns the faithful Warrior soldier nicknamed Cowboy. "Who wants to hide?", responds his fellow countryman Vermin. Moments later, a brawl begins with the Orphans on rival gang territory, all because the Warriors prefer to risk their lives in another clash rather than remove the sacred colors of their own gang. Although Hill's screenplay predates the hip-hop concept of "representing", the Warriors consider their Brooklyn heritage a talisman of legitimacy, status, and power.

Colors, a signal of belonging, a tribal language made of leather jackets, bandanas, and war paint. Each gang has its distinctive chromatic style, that of the Baseball Furies: green and yellow explode on their faces like toxic threats, while the black of their uniforms makes them silent predators, faceless shadows.

The Rogues: red and black dominate, like urban demons feeding on chaos. They are the faceless antagonist, the short-seller financier, the nightmare around the corner. The Warriors: the reddish-brown of their jackets is not accidental—it is the earth, survival, the primitive instinct to stand until dawn. For another dawn.

With a long night in the city that never sleeps, Hill envisioned a New York far from the seductive grime of his contemporary Taxi Driver. The film's attitude places it halfway, aware of the dirt and decay and yet infatuated with them. New York can be dirty, rabid, and overcrowded, but it's the only one we have.

Imagine the Warriors never get back to Coney Island. Their urban odyssey could become an open-air prison, and who could save them but Snake Plissken? Because John Carpenter will take the tribal violence of The Warriors and immerse it in a neo-noir apocalypse, where the gangs not only have bats and knives but also a president to save and total anarchy to cradle. If Walter Hill painted New York as an urban jungle, Carpenter transformed it into a post-civilization planet where the city itself is a sentient creature that chews and digests those who dare to set foot in it. Before everyone, inhabitants, institutions, sovereigns, all became inertial gastrointestinal microorganisms.

In the end, The Warriors is not a film. It is a feverish dream, a dark fairy tale told to the subway's neon lights, a surreal journey where violence is choreography and danger a deadly game. An odyssey without an Odysseus, an urban legend that continues to pulse in the veins of anyone who has ever heard the metallic sound of the rails under a starless sky.