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Whether you find yourself fascinated or frustrated with the recent glut of comic book inspired films, you can't deny that the genre is currently at its peak. What you may not realize is that while films such as 300 and Sin City strive to ape the look and feel of their hand drawn source material, a rudimentary attempt was made at something similar a quarter century in advance. While The Warriors itself is not based on a comic, the novel from which it's adapted does make use of them as a storytelling tool.

While on the run, one of the gang members happens to be reading a comic book based on Anabasis, and the parallels are used as a narrative device throughout the novel. The film version pays homage to this by using animated wipes and cel paintings for scene transitions, giving the film a distinctive comic book flavor. This lends itself well to the rather elementary story structure, which is not unlike that of an ancient epic. As they journey home across a hostile wasteland, our heroes are faced with a series of obvious trials and those who take the moral high road pass, while those who do not are punished. But much like an ancient parable or many a 1970s comic book yarn, there's a gentle undercurrent of absurdity to the tale. The question isn't so much which characters will make it to the end of the movie but how they'll have changed when they arrive.

I'm already pretty familiar with The Warriors, but in screening it again for this article I couldn't help but notice that it doesn't feel like a movie that's as old as it is. The look and style of the film is in some ways distinctly '70s but in many more ways it feels as though it might have been filmed very recently. The dialogue (which – be warned – is the primary reason for the R rating) intentionally avoids more than a handful of contemporary colloquialisms and as a result, still sounds remarkably modern. In fact, the entire film takes place in a distorted version of Manhattan that could never possibly exist, and it's this effective use of alternate reality that keeps the film from feeling as dated as it probably should. But more than anything it is the thematic cues that keep The Warriors feeling as fresh and fun as the first time I saw it. The film is shot primarily at night, and it rains for a good part of the time. But there's a sense of playful enthusiasm beneath it all and the time and location of the final scene is by no means an accident.

What separates the Warriors from their peers is their optimism and obvious belief that their sense of brotherhood will pull them through anything. The other gangs the Warriors encounter on their gauntlet home are primarily obsessed with tribal matters - recognition and power – they are thuggish automatons that have no sense of family. But it's clear by the end that the Warriors have grown from their experience, and that whatever becomes of them – whatever becomes of the Five Boroughs – Cyrus' vision of unity just might have a chance.
Can you dig it?

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