Walter’s Hill’s 1979 The Warriors was a box office hit and has grown to become an even greater cult classic over the years, but was released to considerable criticism and controversy at the time. Unfortunately, that reputation led Hill, decades later, to create a Director’s Cut in 2005 that attempted to water down the content of the film by inserting comic book art panels during scene transitions to emphasize that the story was not meant to be taken seriously. It was a bad call and I don’t know any fan who would claim to prefer that version of the movie.
For the next decade and a half, The Warriors became yet another infamous example of a misguided director’s cut inferior to the original. As the years went on, it felt like a miracle would be needed to get the 1979 theatrical cut back into print on a decent physical media release. Thankfully, if belatedly, that has finally happened, and with a new 4K restoration to boot. Can you dig it? Indeed, I can.
| Title: | The Warriors |
| Year of Release: | 1979 |
| Director: | Walter Hill |
| Watched On: | 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray |
| Available On: | Blu-ray Paramount+ AMC+ FuboTV Various VOD purchase and rental platforms |
Loosely based on a novel by author Sol Yurick, which was in turn even more loosely based on the Ancient Greek story of Anabasis, The Warriors is set in a dystopian version of New York City, where the streets are overrun with dozens of rival gangs constantly fighting for control over small patches of turf. Into this landscape, a charismatic messiah figure named Cyrus (Roger Hill) has risen with a plan to unite all the gangs of the city into one unstoppable army of the night that neither the police nor the Mafia will be able to touch.
Calling representatives from every faction to a conclave in Central Park, Cyrus only just begins to lay out his proposal for harmonious mutual cooperation when a shot rings out, taking him down. In the chaos and confusion that follow, a finger of blame is pointed at a small group of Coney Island roughnecks called the Warriors. Realizing that nobody will want to listen to their side of the story, the boys make a run for it. Even though they manage to escape immediate danger, they face a long and arduous trek back home with every other gang in the city hunting for their heads.
Like most of Hill’s work, The Warriors is a very masculine, macho movie directed in a particularly hard-edged style. The picture is loaded with action and violence. Plotting is lean and relatively uncomplicated. Dialogue is often terse, spoken out of necessity to move the narrative forward. Some of the characters are rough around the edges – especially the hot-headed Ajax (James Remar), who regularly spews uncomfortable homophobic slurs and is a dangerous menace to women. The seedy atmosphere of 1970s Dirty Old New York is as much as character in the film as any of the actors on screen.
At the same time, the film also puts forth the rather whimsical conceit that, in this universe, all the gangs wear matching themed costumes as their “colors” to identify their allegiances. Some are simple, like the Warriors’ shirtless leather vests, while others are far more outlandish – such as mime makeup, karate gi, farmers’ overalls, or sparkly disco jackets. In the movie’s most iconic scene, the Warriors face off against the Baseball Furies, a group of loonies wearing Yankees uniforms with their faces fully painted in wild colors.
With such a strong fantastical slant, The Warriors was never meant to be, and never could be, read as any sort of docudrama about the harsh realities of inner city life. Parts of the movie are already so cartoonish that they almost might edge into camp if Hill hadn’t had such a strong unifying vision to contain them. The last thing the film ever needed was for the director to hammer home the message that, “Look, this is sort of like a comic book!” in a heavy-handed manner. That was always perfectly evident without needing to put literal comic book pages onto the screen.
Sadly, Hill’s third feature as director, The Warriors was released to theaters in 1979 just six months after his The Driver had taken a critical drubbing and flopped at the box office. (That movie would find redemption and wider appreciation years later.) The Warriors was likewise poorly received by critics of the day, who couldn’t make sense of the picture’s tone and were turned off by the violence. The film did much better with paying audiences, especially young men. However, part of its box office success was driven by actual gang members, who flocked to theaters in urban areas to see the movie. That made the theater owners uncomfortable and regrettably led to real outbreaks of violence, including three deaths. As a result, the studio pulled all advertising from radio and TV, theaters hired security guards to watch over screenings, and the scheduled theatrical run was cut short in many places.
Despite the money it brought in, The Warriors became a major point of contention between the director and the studio, which didn’t like the movie or the hassle it caused. Combined with the negative reviews, that experience stuck with Walter Hill over the years, enough that he felt the movie needed fixing to clarify that the story and the violence were just silly comic book stuff. The 2005 Director’s Cut was clearly the result of a much older filmmaker attempting to retroactively impose new ideas onto his old work – ideas that his younger self would have scoffed at when actually making the film.
By 2005, Walter Hill himself seemed to be the only person who felt a director’s cut of The Warriors was needed. Even with its marketing campaign canceled, the film’s 1979 theatrical release was very profitable, and it went on to become a big cult item on home video over the years. Critical support also eventually turned around on the movie. Later reviews better recognized and appreciated Hill’s unique blend of fantasy and gritty action played to a fantastic synth and hard rock soundtrack. Fans loved The Warriors as it was.
The added comic panel inserts in the Director’s Cut were stilted and dragged down the pacing. They felt like an imposition from a man who had probably never actually read a comic book. If perhaps not the worst revisionist travesty an aging director ever imposed onto an old film, the Director’s Cut added nothing of value to The Warriors . Without question, Hill’s original 1979 theatrical cut is the superior version of this movie.
The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
Paramount released The Warriors on Blu-ray, as well as the short-lived HD DVD format, back in 2007, but both contained only the so-called Ultimate Director’s Cut first created for DVD a couple years earlier. In late 2023, boutique label Arrow Video licensed the title and released Limited Edition sets on both regular Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD that restored the original 1979 theatrical cut, alongside the Director’s Cut, in fancy packaging. A slimmed-down, single-disc 4K Ultra HD Special Edition followed in early 2024 with just the theatrical cut in a regular keepcase. I opted for that one.
I reviewed the Director’s Cut Blu-ray in 2007 and was very enthusiastic about the video transfer at that time. Looking back with today’s standards, I realize that the disc had a fair amount of grain reduction, contrast and color boosting, and other digital tweaks to make the movie look punchier and more comic book-like. While I don’t think it looks awful, I’m not as forgiving of the extraneous processing now as I was seventeen years ago.
For the Ultra HD edition, Arrow has struck a new 4K remaster of the theatrical cut from the Original Camera Negative. The result looks much more like I would expect from a low-budget movie shot on the nighttime streets of New York City in 1979 – which is to say that it’s pretty grainy and colors aren’t quite as vivid as the old disc, but it feels more natural and film-like. The mildly letterboxed 1.85:1 image (the Paramount transfer was also slightly opened-up to full-screen 16:9) is still decently sharp, and the grain is never excessive or overwhelming. The HDR grade on the 4K edition is also a little dimmer than the old Blu-ray, but feels appropriate enough for a story that takes place almost entirely at night. Contrast looks good, and shadow detail is preserved.
The movie’s soundtrack is provided in three options: the original mono (PCM 2.0), a stereo remix (DTS-HD MA 2.0), and a brand new Dolby Atmos mix. I sampled them all and came out preferring the mono. (Note: I listen to mono soundtracks with the audio split equally between my front main speakers, not collapsed down to just the center speaker.) While the remixes have the advantage of spreading music – both the score and licensed songs – across the soundstage, the mono track does the best job of preserving all the original auditory detail. Both remixes are heavily noise-reduced. That’s especially noticeable in the dialogue and the guitar riffs in the score, both of which sound much sharper and clearer in mono.
In fact, of the two remixes, the stereo track sounds a little richer than the Atmos, which is excessively rolled-off and sounds very dull. The movie doesn’t benefit much of anything for being in Atmos (it has exactly one helicopter flyover early on), and I fail to see the need to remix this mono soundtrack for that format. I tested the 5.1 track on the Paramount Blu-ray as well, and even that sounds better than the new Atmos mix. If Arrow really felt it necessary to offer a multi-channel sound option for The Warriors, carrying over that track would have been a better use of resources than creating such a pointless Atmos remix.
Even the single-disc 4K Special Edition is loaded with bonus features. New to Arrow are a very engaging audio commentary by film critic Walter Chaw, an isolated score track, and recent interviews with director Walter Hill, editor Billy Weber, and costume designer Bobbie Mannix. Following that are a location tour, an appreciation of the soundtrack, a couple image gallery montages, and a 1.5-hour roundtable discussion about the film hosted by Josh Olson from The Movies That Made Me podcast. Recycled from Paramount are four restrospective featurettes created in 2005, plus a trailer.
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Note: All screenshots on this page were taken from the Director’s Cut Blu-ray of the film released by Paramount in 2007 and are used for illustration purposes only.
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