Tue 24 Jun 2008
THE WARRIORS (1979)
In the extras for this director Walter Hill describes this as essentially a comic book in live action form, which it is, and a good one too. He also says that it’s based on an incident from ancient Greek history. * I have some doubts that even now they’d be trotting this one out to show high school classes to help bring the subject of history to life, but Walter’s apparently right on the money there too.
Comic books, like myths and legends, tend to be about archetypes, and work on a broad brush-stroke kind of level. The concept of hero and villain, and the basics of the story are more vital to the enterprise than finer shadings, painstakingly detailed plot development and a lot of furrowed-brow committee meetings on the subject of plausibility. In other words, the combination of the two areas is a natural, in the unlikely motion picture event that you’ve got someone in charge of the project who knows what they’re doing, and the even more unlikely event that they are surrounded by people who are sympathetic to their goal.
Anyway, that’s what happens in The Warriors. The dialogue is craptastic throughout, the acting mostly comes in various flavours of balsa wood, and, in combination they routinely hit notes that sound like a xylophone with various keys replaced at random by old steel beer cans. None of this matters. All that’s allowed to matter is The Story, The Form, and The Pacing. The Form is epic, man. The Form is a real city shot and lit to look like a parody of a real city constructed out of the wilder samples in a paint company’s brochure. The Form is your classic case of a group of outnumbered heroes beset by absolutely everything else in the picture that isn’t bathroom fittings or asphalt.
The Pacing has one gear, which is non-stop.
The Story is that there are a number of highly unlikely costumed and themed gangs in New York City, all constantly at each others’ throats over turf wars, and possibly the constant arguments over where to buy the best pizza. A kind of council meeting is called by the largest and best organised of the gangs, The Riffs. (I guess Jimmy Page and Ritchie Blackmore are associate members.) The leader of the Riffs is shot, and the blame is put on our hee-roes, The Warriors. They then have to make their way back to their own Coney Island turf, not only pursued by The Riffs, and the police, but by every other gang in the city.
That’s the whole deal, and it’s all you need. The thing just goes, and the thing just works and that’s all there is to it. A whole movie of pure surface tension.
Just as well too, because so much of The Warriors is pure cheese, which is another of its considerable pleasures. Those gangs. Those outfits. At the big council of war deal near the start, there are some real pearlers for the speedy of eye. There’s apparently a gang who dress up as Marcel Marceau. I guess they’re the Walking Into Imaginary Wind gang, or maybe the Men Trapped Inside Invisible Telephone Booths. There’s the frightening mob who all wear bright yellow matching silk-look baseball jackets – presumably the Closet Gay Gang Who Doesn’t Know It Yet. In the body of the picture, the most unforgettable are the guys in full baseball outfits with mis-applied KISS make-up, or as I prefer to think of them, the “I Want to Home Run All Nite (and Bunt Every Day)” Gang. But not to be underrated are the guys in roller skates who wear overalls and have British soccer player 70s hair. You can imagine how much of an advantage roller skates would give you in a street fight. Who wears overalls as leisure-wear anyway? Well, yeah, I know, but what GUYS wear overalls as leisure-wear?
The dialogue appears to veer in and out of the 1950s and 1960s, give or take some swearing and kneecap-obvious sexual references. This is even strangely appropriate, in a cloth-eared variant on genre (and era)-hopping synchronicity. In a lot of ways, in tone, The Warriors is a juvenile delinquent picture from the 50s, and a lot of the rest of it is West Side Story minus the music. Actually it’s probably at least as much a musical without people singing and dancing on screen as it is Greek tragedy-gone-gang movie. The singing stays on the soundtrack and off the screen, and the dancing is enacted by way of modified movie kung fu involving bats, knives, and metal pipes, but the smell of Broadway pervades the nostrils nonetheless.
I don’t know what to say about the acting in this, at least when any can be detected. By conventional standards a lot of it reeks of stinkitude, but the dialogue would have stymied an Olivier, and given that conventional standards of dialogue and acting have nothing whatsoever to do with what makes this movie work, it’s not anything worth losing sleep over. More importantly it’s nothing you’ll gain sleep over.
Deborah Van Valkenburgh, as the love interest who blows in for no apparent reason about 20 minutes into the picture, does some major eye and lip work in putting a little flesh on the bones of her character against all likely odds. David Patrick Kelly steals any acting side of the movie as the degenerate, insane leader of the main heel group, The Rogues. You haven’t seen a winningly demented performance like this since Sam Neill starred in that famous advertising campaign for red meat, including him peering through suburban lounge-room windows and manifesting himself up a tree. Mercedes Ruehl has a small bit in there, and is effective as usual. James Remar plays the malcontent in The Warriors gang like a somewhat surlier version of Reggie from The Archies. Some of you folks also may have seen him do some acting in the TV show Dexter, where he plays Dexter’s adoptive dad. Actually he’s less cardboard-flavoured than most of The Warriors troupe.
Of the latter it must be said that a girlier group of street fightin’ cummerbunds would be difficult to imagine. Between the fluting voices, the general knees-a-knockin’ attitude to any threat of violent activity and the whining and moping they get up to throughout, you’d figure that most under-age netball teams could give them a fair run for their money in a knockdown, drag-out brawl. It’s a considerable tribute to Walter Hill’s skill as director that we continue to care about The Warriors as a gang. Particularly because, on a character by character basis, they give up personality points to the anonymous kids who used to sit up the back in Welcome Back, Kotter. In fact they could have had the Sweathogs from that show play The Warriors, and the only difference anyone would have noticed was the improvement, and Freddie “Boom Boom” Washington saying “Hi there” a lot, out of context.
In some ways, it’s a cheesy action-movie of the period, with more than accidental similarities to the general feel and iconography of the kung fu movies of the 70s. (Have a gander at the wide shots of The Riffs in their home cavern/basement thingo, and also what the more senior Riffs guys are wearing – it’s multi-coloured Dimmey’s silk dressing downs for everybody. Not to mention the fairly hilariously cack-handed fighting styles on display in the action scenes. This is not so much kung fu, as it is what Benny Hill so frequently summarised as: “It’s not egg, it’s not young, it’s just foo.”)
What makes it transcend generic limitations is that, in spite of the story’s origins in Greek history/legend, and the avowed comic book sensibility, it’s one of the moviest movies that ever movied. It really couldn’t have worked in any other medium anywhere near as well. By an effort of will, and single-minded belief in his concept (well, and talent to execute it as conceived) Hill transforms drek into myth, and a cheese-platter into pure movie. The result isn’t a great picture, but it’s a one-off, and distinctive and memorable, and it’s kind of a great achievement anyway.
Just one other little sourball to break up the general love-in here. For some reason – certainly not readily apparent to the viewer of the finished product – the sequences are framed by a visual device which literally uses comic book imagery as transitions. That is, panels, borders, narrative and dialogue balloons, and images kind of stationary-rotoscoped which transform live-action to drawings and back again. It’s kind of neat looking, and completely intrusive. It knocks the viewer out of the movie time and again, and as it isn’t really intended as ironic commentary – at least it doesn’t work that way – it’s difficult to work out what it was intended to achieve. Basically, if the viewer gets it’s kind of comic-booky, they already know that, and if they don’t, why dwell on it? As the great popular culture analyst Daffy Duck once so eloquently put it: “Don’t be so danged literal.” **
However, The Warriors sucks you in all the way (maybe a slight slackening of the girdle of tension during the last ten minutes or so, but still), and between the howlingly empty streetscape, only populated by colour-coordinated gang members, and the intermittently annoying and thoroughly dated synthesiser score that nonetheless, still keeps the tension itching away at the skull, it has a breathless, airless, eerie feel that will stay with you. It’s dated but timeless, it’s trash but great trash, and it took me nearly thirty years to see it, but I’m telling you not to wait so long.
(9 out of 11 Margaret Pomerantz Heads on a Hubcap)
* (The version I’m talking about is a 2005 “Director’s Cut” reissue.)
** (I have no idea where the comic book style visual insertions were in the originally-released version, or whether it’s something Hill always intended that were inserted into his “Ultimate Director’s Cut” version at a later date. Other than the introductory illustration and narration (Hill’s voice if I’m not mistaken), as far as Unca Leapster is concerned, they could have left the lot out and only improved the picture.)
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9 Responses to “LEAPSTER’S MOVIE-A-DAY PLAN – Vulgar Factions”
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June 24th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Pure cheese, alright.. but the smelly kind. And not the refined smelly kind. The poisonous, furry, mouldy, bacteria-infested kind.
This movie has aged terribly and is chock full of self-importance. In a word it is just downright silly. It lacks irony and is hopelessly unconvincing, no matter how one looks at it - live comic book, archetypal myth, fantasy, apocalyptic/schlock action etc. It tries way too hard to be irreverent. I implore you to please refrain from garnering this muck with any pop culture credentials.
Aparently this is a cult movie, but I think it was Robert Altman who said (I’m paraphrasing here): “What is a cult? It just means not enough people to make a minority.”
This movie deserves its cult status. Amen to that.
P.S - To balance out my utter disdain for this rubbish, your pick of “3:10 to Yuma” was right on the money.
June 24th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
I forgot to add one more thing:
‘They Live’ is a kind-of similar movie that is far more successful. It has a life of its own, which is much more than I can say for ‘The Warriors’
June 25th, 2008 at 9:00 am
This was the first film I ever rented when my parents bought a VHS machine. It was about 1984, I think. I haven’t seen it since. All I remember is me and my mates laughing at the dude with the high pitched voice saying, “Warrors, come out to play-ay”.
Greek tale? The Argonauts being pursued by the Colchians?
June 25th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Re Perseus’s comment:
The reference is apparently to the Battle of Cunaxa, which took place in 411BC according to the prologue of the movie, and 401BC according to Wikipedia. I guess we put the difference down to daylight saving or a typo.
More specifically, the reference is to the aftermath of the battle.
Anyway, allowing for my fairly complete ignorance in this area, the story goes something like this.
Cyrus the Younger and his brother, who’d seized the throne under the name Artaxerxes II, were fighting over the throne to the Persian Empire. I gather Artaxerxes had extensive Persian troops at his disposal - a huge number. Cyrus had assembled mercenary forces, substantially Greek troops on one hand, and Asian on the other.
Supposedly Cyrus was killed on another front, the Greek mercenaries didn’t know, and fought on, achieving victories against the much larger army of Artaxerxes.
Regardless, the relevant part of the story is that, in the aftermath, the Greeks were marooned in another empire, surrounded by hostile forces, and had to find their way back home, hundreds of miles away. This is the part of the story that “The Warriors” retells, after a fashion, not to mention quite a few fashion disasters. I gather it might be known in some circles as the March of the Ten Thousand. The Greek soldier and writer who recorded the account was Xenophon.
That version is pretty much all abstracted from the Wikipedia entry on the battle. I’m sure there are other accounts around, and presumably there are differences in the telling. It was all Greek news to me.
You’ll be delighted to know that the “Warri-Ors - come out to play-yay” bit is used on the menu screen of the version I reviewed, so you run into it right away.
Specific mention of this story being the inspiration for “The Warriors” is made in director Walter Hill’s introduction to the movie on the 2005 DVD version, which was obviously not included in the original release.
The only other specific mention occurs in the prologue, which features comic book style illustration and a brief introductory narration, which, on a second listen, is definitely Hill’s voice. (According to the extras material, more extensive narration was originally planned, and Orson Welles was slated to do it. This never eventuated.)
I have no idea whether the short prologue - which is pretty important to setting up what Hill is going for in the picture - was included in the original version. If I had to guess, I’d say no. Perhaps someone else can elaborate?
June 25th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Coincidentally, a group of my students were talking about The Warriors just last week in class.
They liked it.
When one of them asked me whether I’d seen it and I replied “The baseball furies dropped the ball” they were impressed. Well, they seemed impressed.
I saw the film at one of the Bourke Street cinemas when it came out in 1979, but I don’t remember the comic book garnishing.
Still, to this day, when anybody asks me why I did something I reply “No reason. I just like doing things like that!”
I see Tony Scott is going to do a remake due in 2010 and set in LA.
Stay tuned, boppers.
June 25th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Re Pokksey’s comments:
“Chock full of self importance”
Walter Hill, while obviously no barrel of laughs, gives some interesting insights into his thinking behind the movie in the various mini-documentaries that comprise the extras on the 2005 DVD.
He’s both unpretentious and non-precious about the movie. He says the three main factors he wanted to integrate were that it should operate on a comic-book basis, that it be rooted in the foundation of the Greek legend and/or history that inspired it, and that it should incorporate a somewhat futuristic look. By comic book, I take that to mean all surface tension and immediate intensity, the comparison with the Greek origins of the tale was a metaphor for courage in adversity (he says pretty much exactly that in the introduction), and he says “somewhat futuristic” which isn’t such a bad description of the film’s look and atmosphere, but I’d say more “time-dislocated” - it’s a real city, made to look moreso in the shooting, to the point where it becomes slightly surreal, and the time wasn’t meant to be specifically the present of 1979, or the future in a science-fiction sense - it’s a separate time and space that we can call movieland, or something.
He also specifically says that when the studio powers-that-be wouldn’t allow him to shoot it with an all Black/Latino cast - which he thought the story demanded - this forced him to go another way, which was basically away from any realistic concerns, and towards a setting and style that was more purely fictional, and put the focus back on the essence of the Greek story.
I think stylistic choices in costuming and dialogue also point out that he wasn’t aiming for anything realistic to that time, (or to any future-prognostication type idea), which is what I was getting at with references to 50s JD movie type dialogue and West Side Story iconography.
To me this makes any reference to the movie being “dated” pretty much irrelevant. Whether it stands proud or takes a Three Stooges-like pratfall, it does so outside of any concept of contemporaneity or realism. Those simply aren’t the terms of this movie.
I’d have to say that I thought that any idea that the movie is dated misses the point entirely.
If you’re saying the story itself is dated, well, the movie “300″ told a not dissimilar story originating from a similar era, and that seemed to do all right. One was shot in period clobber and one in a fantasyland version of mid-late 20th century setting, but the essence of the stories was comparable.
Back to “self-importance”, Hill’s summary (cited above) seems free of that quality. Those were the elements he sought to combine and he says that they hadn’t been in a mainstream (US?) movie setting to that point. He also says that he thinks one of the reasons it has worked well for audiences, and continues to command a following is because of the leavening humour. I can’t say I thought it was a factor at all, because outside of David Patrick Kelly’s performance as the main heel (which has a great joy of villainous overplaying to it, which works in the story-telling context, and is inherently enjoyable outside of that as a piece of ripe ham), I didn’t notice any. But that’s what he says. This doesn’t sound particularly self-important or pretentious either.
“It tries way too hard to be irreverent.”
To what? Authority? The police are depicted as one more enemy seeking to run down The Warriors. There’s no hint of attempted social commentary there. To baseball? To roller skaters? To other action movies? I can’t follow this particular objection.
“Lacks irony”
Yep, exactly. It does what it needs to do and plays it (as a comic book would) dead straight. The gang survives or it doesn’t. The surface tension, the pacing, the bare bones plotting, the relentless series of action/crisis scenes, the use of the disembodied urban DJ as de facto Greek chorus (a gimmick later abstracted by Frank Miller in his influential Batman: The Dark Knight Returns comic - he changed it from a DJ to the general TV news media, and, by the way, this movie was definitely a major influence on that finite comic series, and ripped straight from that for use in the Baz Luhrman version of “Romeo and Claire Danes”) to enhance the tension by metering their progress: that’s the whole movie. The gang: do they succeed and survive or do they fail and die?
If you want to see how irony works in this kind of comic book context, check out the largely lame-brained 80s Batman movies.
Irony could work with this kind of story, but it would be a completely different kind of enterprise. Irony worked just fine in the 60s version of Batman. This obviously wasn’t what Hill was going for in “The Warriors”. You can knock a movie for failing on its own terms, but I’ve never got the idea of knocking a film just because it wasn’t what you wanted in a film.
“hopelessly unconvincing” as “live comic book, archetypal myth, fantasy, apocalyptic/schlock action”
For reasons I’ll go into in a sec, I think we’re all talking the comic book thing up too much (including Hill), but I have to say, as a lifetime comic reader and a guy who was a big enough fan to do his own comics fanzine many many Navajo moons ago, that I’ll wager any comic book writer and artist would be pretty pleased with having produced something that told an elemental story in as gripping and technically adept a fashion as this, within their medium.
I absolutely disagree that it doesn’t work on a supposed ‘comic-book’ level.
“archetypal myth”?
Well, it’s based on an old story, but not a myth. Not so much to split hairs over that, but I don’t think the story itself is archetypal so much - I’m not even sure the specific story is all that well known. Instead I’d probably say it was an exemplar of an archetypal story type - a battle of relatively few against seemingly impossible odds. The archetypal human quality being represented or examined - and Hill says this directly, in the prologue - is courage. The movie’s one question is: can the heroes hold their emotional ground, and keep their integrity as they traverse the physical miles beset by a constant barrage of hostile forces? Does it “convince” on that level? I’m not sure “convince” is the right question. It’s clearly about that subject and no other. Does it hold your attention on that level? Probably down to the individual. For you apparently no, for me emphatically yes.
“fantasy”
How does fantasy ever “convince”? Fantasy inherently works on a non-rational basis. It might be logical, in some fashion, but not factual, and often if not exclusively is inherently irrational. The Warriors operates in a time-disjoint fantasy city-scape which has enough points in common with real life to be accessible, and many many others which distance it from reality in general, and that time in reality in particular. “Convincing” isn’t a relevant quality. The movie is set in a construct world that may appeal or not, and works as a setting for this story or it doesn’t. To me it absolutely works.
“apocalyptic/schlock action”
I don’t get the construct term, so I’ll skate past that, other than to say it isn’t “Soylent Green” or “Logan’s Run” and it’s not meant to be. It has a vague haunting smell of science-fiction in its visual style, but otherwise that’s exactly what it isn’t. The aforementioned Frank Miller Dark Knight comics series, which has many touchstones in common with “The Warriors” is explicitly apocalyptic. Beyond the scene very early in the picture in which the gangs meet and there’s some vague plan of taking over the city - this really isn’t a movie about apocalypse at all.
“Schlock action” - yes it is. It’s got a lot in common with other drive-in action movies of the 1970s. I say things about how it’s done here - the way it’s shot, the score to an extent, the focus on making the heroes’ journey something analogous to legend or myth in stature - an approach that I gather you find either inherently repellent or somehow risible at least in this context - make it transcend the genre.
And that’s my final point, and also why I’m uncomfortable with the focus on comic book comparisons.
(And incidentally, unlike “300″, its point of origin wasn’t in comics - “The Warriors” was adapted from a novel. This doesn’t mean it’s inherently better, of course. The important thing is that the notion of comic-book like breakdowns of action, the style of storytelling and keeping the focus exclusively and non-ironically on the main story point and the characters as archetypes of a struggle and a heroic quality all the way - that concept came from Walter Hill’s interpretation of the source material, not the form of that material.)
This is pure movie storytelling, and it’s great at it. It couldn’t be done this way in any other medium. In a way, “The Warriors” is what movies are (or can be) all about - pure surface tension impeccably maintained. There’s not a word in what you said about how well this movie is shot, edited, conceived as a whole, or assembled. Pokksey, I have to say, that’s what you missed in it.
There’s too many limitations inherent in the quality of dialogue, performances, characterisations, and in general what you might call the ‘artistic reach’ of the movie for it to be called a great movie. But it’s more than an example of superior movie-storytelling. It’s the work of a master-craftsman (no doubt with a great and dedicated team behind him) in extraordinary form manipulating the medium with the control of a great musician playing his instrument. Everything he left out - including the qualities that I said stopped this from any consideration of being a great movie - is left out for a reason. Everything included is there for a reason.
As far as achieving what he set out to do, I don’t think he puts a single toe wrong, much less a foot. The form is the content is the medium. That’s what I’m saying about “The Warriors”. You could use it to teach movie storytelling - it’s a great example of that. It’s not just a textbook example - it’s the whole textbook.
To me, all that’s inarguable. Whether you or I like the particular flavour of cheese represented by the genre (in this case, of 70s action movies - and I’m probably neutral on the subject - is…well I was going to say irrelevant, but it’s relevant to how much any one person LIKES a movie. It’s not relevant to how well executed “The Warriors” is or isn’t.
COMPLETE WINDY DIGRESSION EVERYONE CAN FEEL FREE TO SKIP IF THEY WANT
For what it’s worth, I’ve been reviewing movies for a bazillion years, and here’s how I break it down:
- How well does a movie achieve what it’s trying to do? (Obviously including “How well does it work AS A MOVIE.)
- How much worth doing was the thing/s it was ‘trying to do’? (Speaking to the ambitions and limitations of the movie in question, including its generic limitations, how it approached those, and such considerations as the limitations I mentioned in “The Warriors”. ) You could call also this approach: “Was this trip really necessary?”
- Do I think this movie would appeal to sections of the audience, and if so why, and maybe to a lesser extent, who?
- Did I like the movie and WHY? Without the why, it’s just like most comparisons about movies, TV etc in general conversation - which to me breaks down to everyone sitting around and saying, in not so many words, “But my farts don’t smell and yours do” or “Mine goes up to eleven.”
Any reviewer (most of whom erroneously call themselves ‘critics’) who refuses to get down in that bear pit of the mind and grapple full contact with any movie, putting preconceptions to one side - taking on what that movie is trying to be with no consideration for other things you might prefer it to be - is just not fit for the job. To give one example that comes, not so much to mind, but right up the nostril - Marge Pomerantz. By the time Margaret Pomerantz has said “I”, “But IIIII think”, “IIIIIIIIII have to say…”, “IIIII really felt that…” and “It just didn’t grab MEEEE” about 25 times apiece, in her opening 37 seconds of dissertation on some poor megaplex movie, I’ve already flipped the channel, got a sport score, been disappointed by an old Quickdraw McGraw cartoon, discovered a Saturday Night Live episode I realise I’ve already seen, and settled on “Law and Order: Initials in the Title”.
There’s not one thing that coffee-table magazine-headed person has to say about movies that I find convincing. I don’t believe for one second that she has any structure of thought - any consistently applied critical methodology - from which her opinions arise. I don’t care what she likes, nor if she feels that her farts have the aroma of lavender. To me, anyone could do what she’s doing - the corner milk-bar proprietor, the local footy team’s redoubtable half-back flanker, the slack-jawed guy behind the counter at the petrol station - anybody.
Criticism or reviewing is more than about what someone likes.
It’s a bit like the old fallback position in the pub or at a social gathering or whatever when movies or TV or music is being discussed and inevitably some drongo (who might otherwise be a lovely person) comes out with the old jocular brain- killer: “Weeell, it’s all a matter of opinion anyway, isn’t it?”
What any individual likes is a matter of opinion. Actually not even that - it’s mostly a baseline reaction, and not very much more. Did that music bounce off your eardrum in a personally pleasing manner. Did you have a nice night at the movies because everything blew up on screen in the right order and you had a nice night with your pardner away from the kids. Did that TV show provide the perfect time-filling chewing gum for your mind when you came home dog-tired and wanted something to half-watch while you were chowing down on tonight’s improvised ‘pasta a la whatever was left over in the fridge that wasn’t moving’.
All perfectly valid in its way, which is to say emphatically nothing to do with critical thought whatsoever. That’s the “mass-media as lifestyle adjunct”.
I remain unconvinced that “It’s all a matter of opinion.” I think there’s a difference between whether someone likes/enjoys a movie/album/program and whether that item is any good in any objective sense. Good is better than bad. Objectivity is a possibility. A critical hierarchy is possible where there is some sense of a medium’s history, an understanding of critical thought, a degree of intellectual rigour, not to mention the willingness to roll up the mental sleeves, get down in the bear pit and fight the artefact 2/3 brutal falls to a finish on its own terms. All that fun stuff like that there.
Anyway, that’s how I think about movies and reviewing them. I’ve kind of got lost on whether that was anything to do with what we were saying about “The Warriors”, although I think it kind of was.
Incidentally I liked “They Live” a lot, and also thought it was a decent genre movie, and in some ways a little better than that.
Unlike “The Warriors” it is, to borrow Pokksey’s term, an apocalyptic/schlock action movie. Also unlike “The Warriors” it’s more of the SF sub-genre The Lone Human Survivor vs the Hideous Alien Forces, like “The Omega Man” (and two or three different versions of that), “Invasion of the Bodysnatchers” etc
Also unlike “The Warriors” it contains a significant subtext concerning societal issues. The main issue of “The Warriors” isn’t so much about anything societal - it’s about issues of courage in the face of extreme adversity, i.e. something more elemental to humanity than any conception of society. You could easily do a version of the story set in caveman times, for example, which you really couldn’t with “They Live”, because the subversion of a society’s will by surreptitious means (let alone media) would be meaningless in that context.
However, on another level, they are certainly both cheesy action pictures of their eras. I probably like “They Live” more in a way, but in terms of movie storytelling - i.e. the use of the medium itself - “The Warriors” is the superior movie. Perhaps I mean the more important movie - not in terms of what is said (for example, “They Live” has a message of social significance and “The Warriors” doesn’t) but very much in terms of how the story is told.
The simplest way I can explain what I mean is to say with “They Live”, as with most movies, there’s a difference between what John Carpenter (and collaborators) say/s in it, and how it’s said. In “The Warriors”, Hill removes the distinction. It’s not that this hasn’t been done before, many times, and by those who had greater ambitions, and achieved greater results, but overall, it’s still a rare enough achievement to be worthy of citation. And it’s very rarely done this thoroughly or well.
June 25th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Re Tony’s comment:
Yes, that probably is a badge of honour that you saw it on first release. Whether the kids were impressed with your swingin’ dude outlaw movie-going past, or just with the implied magnitude of your age, I can’t answer. I would have thought in a teaching context these days (or probably any time in the last 30-40 years) getting anything out of kids that wasn’t a snore, a grunt or a stab-wound would be a major achievement.
It’s funny that the guy almost everyone here quotes or cites is the character played by that David Patrick Kelly guy. In a defiantly non-character-driven movie he really stood out. And in a movie that freely eschews decent dialogue, that was a pretty great line. I have a sneaking suspicion that that character, and that line, might harbour the only subtext/societal comment in the movie, and that it’s quite deliberate, but since Walter Hill didn’t see fit to mention it, I’ll keep that one under my hat.
June 27th, 2008 at 1:29 am
Sorry, Larry, I just don’t buy all that.
Although your philosphy on the responsibility of criticism is honourable it just isn’t practical. Most people are interested (albeit a little selfishly) in the reviewer and not so much the movie. When viewers tune in to ‘At the Movies’, many do so because they identify with the host(s). They want a recommendation because ‘They like the type of movies I like’ - a kind of referral system. Or they get off on the irrascible David Stratton indignant over the latest movie employing the Dogme technique. Some just like to see them argue. And the same goes for countless other reviewers.
Surely, you must get the sense that people reading your blog reviews are reading it because of the allure of your personality. That is, how you react to a film, how you rationalise those reactions, and your deft comedic flourishes. This is just human behaviour - an entertaining form of quality assurance, if you will. Most movie-goers are simply trying to avoid wasting their time and money. The goal of the filmmaker is the last thing on their minds. It is impractical to expect more from the viewing public and therefore not feasible to expect reviews that practice ‘intellectual rigour’ as you put it. What you are looking for lies in the academic realm and can be found in published film journals, of which I know few. Maybe this is where the Critic/Reviewer distinction can be made.
Your criterion of “How well does a movie achieve what it’s trying to do” is a slippery slope. How do we know what is trying to be achieved? When do we agree it has been met? Must we do homework before seeing the movie? Should the movie improve the more informed we are? How does this function with comedy? Is the movie doubly funny because I laughed and it says ‘Comedy’ on the DVD spine?
Good filmmakers don’t focus on what they are consciously trying to achieve, rather they tap into their subconscious. This is why I find it easy to label directors who prattle on about their “goal” or “vision” as self-important. Even an intellectual director such as Kubrick was renowned for waiting for something “special” to happen on set, something only the subconscious can identify. The Coens’ art lies in their writing from the subconscious, picking up bits and pieces from people they know, movies they’ve seen, books they’ve read. Mike Leigh literally follows his characters around, listening out for the right moment. The planned goal is a moving target and anyone who thinks they can pinpoint it is fighting a losing battle. A filmmaker can ask, ‘Why did I make the character do that?’, but, ultimately, all the talk about themes and inspiration is nothing but retrofitted rationalisations on how important the movie must be. The correct answer is: it felt right and it was interesting for some reason. I find that the moment we consciously understand the filmmaker’s intention is the moment the movie breaks character and reveals itself as a limited construct trying to fool us. Where’s the art in that?
Comparing movie tastes is, like you say, comparing farts. But you are dismissing how interesting this process can be. Many of the movies we like are determined by what we project onto them, not always because of the artistic merit of the filmmaker. Being baffled by the unsavoury choice of another’s favourite movie requires further inquiry about that person. The type of world you are suggesting is one where the movie’s merits can be ‘proven’ and the viewer’s life experiences has no part in the cycle of life immitating art immitating life. I would suggest that you give more credit to the baseline reaction you speak of, because there is a lot more going on there.
That said, here are my reactions to your reactions to my comments on ‘The Warriors’:
I mention the movie lacks irony because it is too awful to watch straight. A judgement call, but I’m certainly not going to allow the filmmaker to deny me the right of wishing for an improvement. It’s not like I’m suggesting it be turned into a romantic comedy. If you look at Failsafe and Dr Strangelove, which were almost identical in story and released at the same time, irony wins by a mile. Why should your criticism be restricted by the filmmaker’s choice? The criticism is WITH the filmmaker’s choice.
I use a simple method to determine if a movie is dated. How over-powering to the movie is the era in which it was made? Warriors is dated because the music, daggy costumes and street slang reflects the time in which it was made. From the KISS face paint and roller skates to the cheesy and generic guitar-oriented theme.
Unfortunately, the movie does not work on a comic-book level because it feels blandly realistic. I can’t believe the world they try to create. And movies, just like comics, need to create a world of their own where you don’t even realise you are suspending belief. All I saw was a host of dimly lit run-down locations where any minute the director was going to call ‘Cut, and this time with gusto!’.
It does not convince as a fantasy. And of course fantasy can ‘convince’, for the reasons I state above. We all view movies in a state of suspended belief. When that process fails and we are conscious of what we are doing, we can’t go along with the movie. Call it what you want, but I like the term unconvinced.
I mention apocalyptic, but anarchic is probably more accurate. Since the thugs outnumber the cops and civilians are sparse, this is another level in which to view the film. Again, I say unconvincingly because it is trying too hard to be a controversial movie. This is my, probably incorrect and uneducated, justification for use of the term irreverent. Indeed, it was not surprising to hear that some acts of vandalism and even a few murders occurred at some screenings when the movie opened.
But most of all, this movie’s greatest flaw lies in the fact that it gives us no reason to invest in the protaganists. I never cared whether these bafoons made it out alive or not. Because of this the tension is non-existent. The writers attempted to overcome this by softening the main characters (i.e. tender(ish) moments with the Orphans’ girl) and making them underdogs. But the characters are dull and, consequently, the action is dull. Surely an example of great execution includes drawing the audience in. Your faith in the objectivity of execution, it seems, is just a means of trumping the viewer’s annoying humanness.
Anyway, I can only attempt to put my finger on the reason this is a bad movie. In the end, to borrow a saying: I don’t quite know what a bad movie is, but I know it when I see it.
June 27th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Other than one thing which I think your comments highlight about the different way you and I approach “The Warriors”, I won’t go over the actual movie anymore, because I went back over the review and it still says what I wanted to say about the movie, so I’m happy to leave it at that. It’s good that folks who come here - presuming anyone actually does (I don’t have any stats on this) - can see both flavours of opinion on the subject and determine for themselves whatever validity each may hold, or to put it another way, whether I’m full of it, you’re full of it, any combination of both, none of the above, whatever.
“Most of all, this movie’s greatest flaw lies in the fact that it gives us no reason to invest in the protagonists. I never cared whether these buffoons made it out alive or not. Because of this the tension is non-existent…But the characters are dull and, consequently, the action is dull. Surely an example of great execution includes drawing the audience in. Your faith in the objectivity of execution, it seems, is just a means of trumping the viewer’s annoying humanness.”
I agree that the characters are barely even templates (with one exception, and that’s purely because of what the actor involved brought to that character) and “dull” is, in some senses, too kind. But I don’t agree that ‘the action’ is dull. I was engrossed by the movie’s telling of the story. To me, that’s Hill’s major achievement with the movie. Despite sketchy characterisation and all other flaws, to me he gets you hooked on the theme and the gang’s progress towards the goal. And also HOW he does so. Very much HOW.
“Drawing the audience in”?
Well, it drew me in. It didn’t draw you in. You’re the audience in your lounge room, but you’re not “The Audience”.
“It gives us no reason to invest in the protagonists”
Same again. You remember the punchline to the old gag about the Lone Ranger and Tonto being attacked by Indians - “What you mean ‘Us’, White Man?”
The movie got me in enough to care what happened to the Warriors in the end. Actually the movie doesn’t work at all if you don’t. That it did so without conventional means of making the viewer empathise with the characters - such as sketching more detail and endearing qualities into the gang members’ characterisations - to me makes the achievement all the more interesting.
My faith wasn’t in ‘objectivity of execution’ within a movie, whatever that may be - it was in the possibility of objectivity in analysis of a movie (or comic, or record, or whatever.)
You “just don’t buy all that” but I’d say there is a great body of critical work to the contrary, and without it, there would have been no standards for the creation of a critical hierarchy - to really boil this down, a conception of what’s good and what’s bad and what’s in the middle, and WHY - in literature, in movies, in music, in anything creative in any medium, and without this any of those media would have been impaired in their development. In fact to my mind, I’d say more than impaired - they would have struggled to develop in any meaningful way.
Your “I don’t know what one is but I know a bad one when I see it” is a poor substitute. It’s anarchy, or lazy thinking in an excellent disguise. It’s also been proved wrong by this discussion. Here are two people, who have both seen a lot of movies and have some interest in critical thought who are diammetrically opposed on one particular movie - “The Warriors”. You ‘Know a bad movie when you see one’, and that’s the end of the discussion for you. I think it’s got plenty of flaws - re-read the review if you think I gilded the lily on that one, because I think I went into considerable detail on that score - but has an excellence in use of the medium for storytelling (among other notable qualities) that is worth the attention of people who love the movies as a medium as well as a source of recreation.
The only way your theory of “I know when when I see it” can be right is if one of us is a poor judge, and I think in that scenario, it has to be me.
Put more bluntly, we can’t both be right about the movie, we both think we have sufficient grounding in movies and thinking about movies to justify forming a conclusion about this one and no ready way of disproving the other’s claim, (and no interest in that as well, I think), so “I know it when I see it” is a totally compromised critical approach in this case, as one of us “knows” “The Warriors” is useless, and the other “knows” it has its flaws, but is an extremely valuable piece of work in other, more salient ways.
As a critical tool “I just know” is not going to cut the mustard as far as I’m concerned. If anyone published in the papers, magazines, interweb, whatever, wants to go down that path, they better be the funniest writer in history, or I’m outta there in about two seconds and flying down the street on a passing tram. As a colleague of mine said yonks ago, “Opinions are just like arseholes - the vast majority of them are better off covered with trousers.” Dead right too. If it’s all just opinions, it’s fart-smell comparisons and “Mine goes up to eleven” all around. You see some fascination in this - to me it’s just sloppy thinking. Perfect for a good jaw-around in a bar or over dinner or whatever - and that’s all 100% AOK and good clean family fun - but utterly useless in terms of published criticism that anyone’s meant to be able to learn anything from - about the movie in question, or the medium.
If the reviewer’s thoughts don’t come from a consistent system, set of critical values and/or structure that they use equally on everything they review, what use is it to anyone else? If it’s all just “Well, dears, on the day in question, this movie really hit the spot?” or “I just never like that kind of thing”, or “I dunno, it was probably kind of ok, but the laundry came back stained and I was in a bad mood, and the movie didn’t make me feel better” or “I just won Tattslotto - there’s not a movie in the history of mankind and Pauly Shore that I wouldn’t love today” what is the use of it to man, beast or that nurk on Big Brother? The same person’s review of the same movie might change tomorrow.
The type of structured thought I’m talking about doesn’t have to be mine, of course - I just outlined that to give a concrete example. Some form of structured thought is needed though, as is a knowledge and understanding of different genres, and some semblance of movie history, and, to my mind, absolutely a willingness to take on the movie on the level the movie is trying to operate on.
The aim of a movie review is the same as the aim of a movie, or radio show, or piece of music, or art, or even crap electronically scribbled on the internerd - it’s communication. Different kinds of communication, but that’s the base-line of any of these endeavours. Communication of something - whether an artistic sensibility, or a story, or a thought, or a series of connected thoughts - to someone else.
To, in my opinion, shit on the craft, and the potential, of reviewing/criticism by merely blurting a personal reaction is anti-criticism. It communicates nothing. It’s just someone saying over and over again “III am”, “IIII think”, “What IIII did”, the old operatic aria “Me-me-me”. We have a name for people like this we encounter in real life. We call them “boors”, and then we don’t call them at all.
I feel exactly the same way about people who write or speak “criticism” like that in a media forum, i.e. for the intended consumption of others. To frauds like that, I say if that’s all you’ve got to bring to the table, get up, grab your coat, hit the bricks and make room for someone new at the table. People blabbing on about themselves in this kind of context is either not communication or a very poor and rudimentary form of communication. It is completely inadequate for the task being attempted.
On the ‘human nature’ business, I think it’s a bit of a red herring in this argument. If Einstein had gone with human nature presumably he would have kept his maths to a “If one apple is three cents, then four apples is ???” level, rather than forcing himself past more immediate normal human needs and tinkering around with the Theory of Relativity. The reality is, in many areas of our lives, we demand of others, and others demand of us sometimes, something more along the lines of the field of possible and heightened human achievement, rather than the kind of behaviour that comes naturally to the species. I’m gently suggesting that criticism is one of these areas. I’d rather deal with a reviewer who had some aptitude for the field rather than one who doesn’t, and that aptitude - except for the 0.0000001% of homo sapiens who is a natural at forming perfectly apt opinions reeking of truth and perception, as opposed to the 99.999999% who think they are - is going to be shaped by integrity and structure of thought, and a certain amount of knowledge, rigourous thought and study in the area with which they are dealing. Obeying “human nature” is effortless. What I’m suggesting is that to achieve anything worthwhile in this reviewing stuff - with the exception of the aforementioned 0.000001% - takes some effort in the head region.
One further point. “Your criterion of ‘How well does a movie achieve what it’s trying to do’ is a slippery slope”.
I have to say I think that either your argument following that statement is pretty disingenuous, or you didn’t follow what I was getting at, which I thought was fairly straightforward, but maybe this is my miscommunication.
You’re dead right - you don’t need to look at the box of a comedy movie to know it was intended as a comedy. Even the most tatty, lifeless, laughless piece of junk you ever saw - and let’s call it “Bachelor Party - you know it was trying to be a comedy.
You know “The Warriors” was trying to be an exploitation action movie. There’s no ambiguity about on what basis it tried to get audiences into the cinemas.
What I was saying is that as a reviewer, you identify what the movie is trying to achieve within its genre or sub-genre - for example, it’s a college kids on the road beer-drinking movie going for laughs with the odd romantic subplot around the edges - and then you try and assess how well it achieved that goal, within its own parameters.
My point was that you should do that BEFORE you tackle any question of whether such sub-genre and/or other goals of the movie are inherently worthless (or highly worthy for that matter) in your eyes, or in terms of established critical hierarchies, or in terms of your general conception of the mass market tastes and priorities.
I don’t think the basic concept of “How well did a movie achieve what it was trying to do” is remotely difficult to understand. Most people over primary school age have seen enough movies to be able to ascertain what an individual film is trying to do. You don’t have to do homework, or read the package. What it’s ‘trying to do’ is right there on screen for you.
The application of the principle to analysing movies may well be more fraught with difficulty - as in some ways, all this palaver from both of us clearly shows - but the basic concept is pretty simple, and a question any reviewer should be asking themselves about any movie, and bringing their answer to the review.
Since I’d kind of feel remiss if I didn’t offer any examples, to me Pauline Kael is an excellent analyst of movies. Great reviewer, genuine critic. No matter if I completely disagree with her on her overall assessment of individual films - which I very frequently do - I always find her comments interesting, she’s a cracking writer, which helps, there’s a passion for many creative aspects of movie-making which bleeds through in all her stuff, and she’s provides detailed and sharp analysis of success and failure within those aspects in individual films, she will make the time to find some salient qualities in even what she feels is the worst drek she has to wade through, (and vica-versa), and SHE MAKES ME WANT TO SEE THE MOVIES. She really takes a movie on at its own level, and she’s tremendously genre-aware and she really knew her stuff. She’d get down in the bear pit and wrestle with those suckers. To me she’s one shining example of how to do it.
Marge Pomerantz will serve as an example of what I feel is the less desirable end of the spectrum. To me there’s no structure there, no rigour, if it smells off to her or it didn’t hit her right on the day, that’s the end of the story, and there’s no allowance for, or consideration of the possibility of, a more objective view. I don’t get any sense of integrity of point-of-view derived from a set of principles she has about movies. I don’t get any real feel for the medium. She likes going to the movies. Well who doesn’t. Possibly the sourpuss that runs North Korea. If she has any kind of greater understanding of movies in general, or genre, I don’t get it off her television appearances. Never have. To me the movie bounces off her brain and the mouth goes into gear and that’s about the whole story. If she had her own show it could be called “Marge P - Off the Top of Me Head”.
There are any number of other people writing and talking about the movies in the media here that I could have applied the exact same comments to. The vast majority of them, in fact. Some of them tart it up a little more, and try to do a central-casting movie professor imitation, and it comes out just the same, only more pretentious. They’re huffing and farting and convincing themselves they’re surrounded by clouds of sweet-smelling lavender, and I’m just slumped to one side in my old armchair, dispirited and weary-looking, with an “The equestrian events just came on at the Olympics again” facial expression, waiting for the slightest indication of substance, the vaguest inkling of an iota of anything that doesn’t come out in received ‘reviewer-speak’ that says nothing whatsoever, even the barest shred of an attempt to grapple with a movie on its own level as if that were something inherently worth doing, and doing with passion.
Re what I’m doing here, or what Margey P and Davey S do and all that. A mate of mine - the same guy who took the brave stand on trousering most opinions - once said that what he liked in others’ writing, and what he tried to do himself, was something he called “Stand-up reviewing”. He figured everyone in the media was throwing around opinions on music, movies, etc and give or take the one in a chartreuse millennium exception, they were all about as useless as each other, and that all consumers out there in the catching position were about as thrilled to be showered in this useless confetti of opinions as they would be to watch thirty-seven consecutive evenings of dog-racing if they didn’t have a bet on. His approach was to throw in a ton of gags and see what stuck. Our mutual favourite reviewer of all time, Rick Johnson of CREEM magazine had the exact same approach. As it happened, both my mate and Rick Johnson were pretty knowledgeable and perceptive in slicing and dicing popular culture, and that sure helped, but it wasn’t the main part of the show to them.
In my case, talking about this website and the Movie-A-Day reviews particularly, there’s more structure and I’m trying to construct and delineate a point of view (or several) on a movie AS WELL, and that’s a greater part of what I’m trying to do than what they were. But the main aim is unambiguous. I’m trying to entertain. I don’t have any grey areas to hide behind like many “humourists” or “wits” or “essayists” or self-described ‘critics’ who aren’t. If I didn’t entertain with one of my reviews, I failed. Simple as that. And since I don’t get to make the decision as to whether I succeeded - only the one as to what I put up here - that’s the risk I take.
Re Marge and Farmer Stratton, what you say about the personal characteristics, and their interplay and all that good stuff - that’s what (allegedly) makes it a successful TELEVISION SHOW, to those who accept it as that, and are regular viewers. (I’m not, obviously. I think the format of the show is zippy enough, and it’s pretty well put together and Stratton is a pro at reviewing movies in a middle-brow, middle-view, middle-gut, middle-everything kind of way (which is not a knock from me, actually, more of an observation) but Marge I find a trial well beyond any entertainment to be extracted, and well beyond my tolerance level. Not anything about her personally, but purely, and based on many years occasional viewing, and countless salutary examples, on a complete conviction on my part that when it comes to the subjects “motion pictures” and “reviewing”, Marge couldn’t grab a hold of either of them if they had handles attached.
Anyway, my point is, the quality that convinces some people this is highly watchable television holds no connection or implication with whether movies are being reviewed aptly or well.
The Melbourne “Footy Show” was at one time at least, a popular show which discussed football. The qualities which made it popular - again, interplay, personalities etc - had very little to do with whether it was a good example of football analysis. How many people, even in the heyday of its popularity, ever described the Footy Show as an excellent or even significant example of analysis and review of football issues?
Two separate matters. As reviewing creative works with care, objectivity and thought, as opposed to emitting a blast of undiluted and unqualified opinion should be considered two separate matters.
Finally I just want to make it clear to anyone reading this, including Pokksey, that the general observations above comparing what reviewing can be, with what it often unfortunately is, are about that subject, and not about Pokksey, who already put more thought and consideration in his last post (regardless of how much I might disagree with points within it) than most of the reviewers that I see, read or hear in this country will apparently manage in a life’s work.