Critics reviews

Hill's self-aware style adds both to the film's quality and entertainment value—it doesn't suffer from the pretenses of social realism, nor does it completely embrace its alternative universe so as to become Gotham-esqe in execution. It exists as a rare success story in a genre full of self-important parodies that strain too hard for substance rather than style.

Hill's re-edit, even keeping the reupholstered segues to a bare minimum as he does, upsets that delicate balance. It deliberately inverts the original's propulsion from youth toward manhood and brings it all back to the realm of an adolescent's reverie of a healthy street life without parents and where no one will call the police whenever you steal food from corner stands.

The straightforward, straight-line plot—a street gang must cross the length of New York City, pursued by police and rival fraternities—is given the convoluted quality of a fever dream by Hill's quirky, claustrophobic direction. Not quite the clean, elegant creation that his earlier films were, The Warriors admits to failures of conception (occasional) and dialogue (frequent), but there is much of value in Hill's visual elaboration of the material.

Since Washington's birthday, I have become bored with the whole subject of The Warriors. If the movie is not as dangerous as its detractors claim, neither is it as glorious and memorable as some of its less discriminating admirers would have it. I find the spectacle fading from my memory in a jumble of dislocated colors and motions. In retrospect, it seems too studiously unreal.