THE WARRIORS

The Warriors

Watching ‘The Warriors’ in a cinema is a surreal experience. It’s a film that was a part of my daily life growing up, from the baseball guys to the iconic ‘come out to play’ scene that even inspired an Xbox game. Yet, there’s a unique thrill in sitting with the characters on their journey, evoking a wave of nostalgia and personal memories.

There’s also the age—my age. The film hasn’t aged, but my sense of reality has. This is a highly stylised film with as much to do with gang culture as West Side Story. I feel a bit odd watching it, having been at the other end, doing schemes and training and the ethnography of gangs in a previous job that is not my term; that was the metropolitan police who came by, showed us clips from the wire and then had to holler from the staff..but this is iconography.

The film’s use of a lurid synth and a simple line home is a powerful tool that instantly transports me back to my memories of travelling in London. It’s a reminder that London is not just one city, but a collection of postcodes and local butchers. The film’s ability to evoke these memories is truly immersive.

But I digress. The film follows the warriors on a way home that allows commentary on the pecking order. It is quite gripping at times. It’s like Ulysses, the epic poem by Homer, as they end their Homeric journey, losing people to their anger and temptations and then to anything else. It’s fundamentally young men, and it’s harder to watch when they are not that young actors but still firm. Having never been tested outside their turf, it’s interesting to see how badass they are…at times, it’s like the Avengers. It’s fitting that the only thing that stops them is their distrust and limitations, their egos being the first thing.

But when I think of Heartburn Soul Patrol, a reference to a specific scene or group in the film, I think of the guys unfortunate enough to be pressured into gangs post-Chestnut Grove. The humour of this still comes from the fact that these are men in each other’s company with nothing to say to one another…good talk. But with a nuance of media and pirate radio, you feel the story unfolding on a greater level. There is a sense of world-building some MMORPG could learn from.

It’s a relatively taut story of archetypes, such as the hero’s journey or the underdog narrative, that we always need their homes or families. It’s a road movie. And braces along sharply and smartly because of it

Take the train to Coney as soon as you can. It’s a hyperbolic ride for fans of classic stories with a modern twist. It’s not gritty; it’s glam, and I get romancing the underlying issues my belief some. But I feel it wears its cartoon pulp on its sleeve too loudly to be seen as anything other than Wolfpack.