An Ode to the Women of <em>The Warriors</em>

There are plenty of films that strike chords across different audiences, but The Warriors, directed by Walter Hill and premiering in 1979, is one film that crosses most lines. From film buffs who devour the unique to to grad students wading through French New Wave and Social Realism to people who randomly came across it on cable TV once upon a time, The Warriors is largely regarded as a must see film, one that defies convention with its comic book motif and urban grit and can be considered artsy, weird, and fantastical all at the same time. In fact, most people upon giving a synopsis of the film will usually end with “just see it, it’s good, I promise!”

The Warriors begins with a comic book panel showing the Battle of Cunaxa in 401 when an army of Greek soldiers found themselves isolated in the Persian empire 1,000 miles from home facing a desperate march of courage with enemies on all sides. The comic panel then shifts to “Sometime in the future…” to tell the story of the Warriors, a street gang in the 1970s, invited from Coney Island to a meeting of all the New York gangs by Cyrus who proclaims to be the one to unite them all. The catch? No weapons. All the gangs comply as Cyrus speaks, but the leader of the Rogues has other ideas and shoots Cyrus and then blames the Warriors who have to make a mad dash through the city as all the New York gangs hunt them down for revenge.

I first saw The Warriors in a grad school film class and was absolutely mesmerized by the film, by the shots of the city, by the epic story told through an urban landscape. I was wholly unaware of its reputation and had no idea it held such power among people who saw it. I rewatch it regularly and it holds up every single time. It has everything you want in a film—engrossing characters, compelling story, amazing visuals, authentic takes on social issues of the time, and an honesty in its storytelling that leaves you with an awareness and understanding of that time and place in a way nothing else could ever do. 

While the fanbase seems very dude-based—and the film as well since there are so many of them running around the city (in the best costumes and props, no less)—the women in the audience are definitely not forgotten by Hill. That may well be an understatement since women are by and large seen as being able to handle themselves in the city rather than damsels in distress. This is owed to the urban narrative maybe—city girls are tougher, stemming from their femme fatale mothers in noir films decades prior, but also because survival is the utmost in this world and if they’re still walking around or lounging about unbothered in the subway, then dollars to donuts they didn’t get there by calling for help. They got there through sheer will (Mercy) or because they know where to keep their razor blades (The Lizzies), not to mention the radio DJ, our very own Oracle of the Boroughs, who calls the shots over the soundwaves.

The women of The Warriors have come to play and they aren’t fucking around.

With just her mouth and a microphone, the DJ absolutely entrances not just her listeners, but the film audience as well. She is the voice of New York, of this underground world of gangs and territories and conflict, an impartial yet empathetic force filling the ears of all the “street people,” as she fondly calls them, enticing them and entrapping them. Her spells are the records she spins and when she dedicates a song to the Warriors, “here’s a hit with them in mind,” and plays “Nowhere to Run,” all of New York knows to mobilize and start the chase. The directive may have come from the Riffs, Cyrus’s gang, but it’s her voice that moves them to action.

Then we meet our lady of the Orphans, Mercy. Far from being in distress, Mercy is the girlfriend of the head of the Orphans, a beautiful and tough broad with a sharp tongue and a quick wit; she knows a sucker when she sees one, just like she can suss out a lily-livered boaster or an anti-hero swathed in a leather vest. The first sound she makes is clucking at her boyfriend for making a weak decision; the first good look we have of her is walking down the stairs in all her femme fatale glory as the Warriors label her “trouble.”

And instead of cowering at the sign of a new gang, she taunts the Warriors as they march through Orphan territory. Impressed by their show of strength in the face of being outnumbered, she follows them only to find herself ambushed. One molotov cocktail later and she’s on the run through the city, shepherding them from the Bronx to Coney Island. Swan, our resident bare chested anti-hero, weaponizes his toxic masculinity (it is the 70s, after all) and attempts to shame Mercy for her lifestyle, snapping at her for not remembering who she’s slept with any given Friday or Saturday, but she spits her own brand of second wave feminism, telling him she sees her life for what it is: that she can tell where her story ends, with kids in a crowded and crumbling apartment, so she lives in the now, lives for her happiness to combat her circumstances. 

It is even more nuanced for us now, something people in our time with consent on our minds recognize, as Swan rejects Mercy’s advances, her plea to forget her plight. She knows she’s a person, that isn’t at issue, but she rightly assumes others don’t see it. Swan, however, not only sees it, but he respects it. And, also, they are on the run, but that nagging feeling is written all over his face as his journey via subway stations and violent throw downs alters his perception of himself and his world. Mercy saw it, but he can see a different way out for the both of them.

In the 2024 gender-swapped concept album, Warriors, produced by Eisa Davis and Lin-Manuel Miranda, the story is told from a feminist perspective and Mercy isn’t a distraction or a liability, but rather “an extra soldier to help us get back home.” In the song “Call Me Mercy,” this callback to Mercy needing an escape from her circumstances is clear in the lyrics “Hey, let me go wherever you’re going / I can be brave in the moment / Take me away to where the train meets the station.” She’s not an addendum; she’s part of the Warriors and needs to escape as much as they do.

This is part of what the album sought to do: showcase the boroughs of New York during the march back to Coney Island, but making the Warriors all women adds another layer to the narrative. In the film, no one believes that the Warriors didn’t kill Cyrus and the gangs are out for blood. But when it’s a group of women being chased through the city? Women listeners can feel that on a different level, that idea of being pursued under false judgment. Davis told the AP that “I think that it’s just so crucial to think about this — it’s a group of women that no one believes.” They are no longer merely a gang, but a group of lady killers who need to be brought to heel. The album focuses on the mad dash home, the various ways that music can tell the story of a city and touches on the sexism and classism the Warriors come up against, but the visuals of the film bring to light the economic disparity and strife the Warriors faced in a different, quiet, and powerful way.

While the costumes and disparate gangs and view of inner city New York in the 1970s makes the film what it is for audiences, the small scene on the subway when the two rich couples out on the town sit across from Swan and Mercy distill all the themes into a small hand gesture. Mercy, suddenly feeling the class lines as the other women are dressed in their party finery, attempts to smooth her hair just as Swan, chiseled jaw clenched in pride, silently pulls her hand down, a reminder to her that she is beautiful as she is, that he sees her as she is, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with her to fix. It wasn’t that her bravado was all an act, though it was necessary for her survival, but in the face of pastel classism, they both accept both their lot and that they can change it.

Onto the Lizzies—and we’ll give a brief chuckle behind our hand to the word play about them being lesbians because, well, what else would a group of women who prefer each other’s company to that of men be called? 

And also because they are actually lesbians. 

But the name is where the Lizzies lose a bit of their cliche, as they are the gang who comes the closest to besting the Warriors. For one, the Warriors, separated from each other at this point, are worn out, but they’re also horny dudes in the 1970s coming across a trove of beautiful and welcoming women telling them to just relax and party. The Lizzies may as well have been Disco Sirens for all the care the Warriors put into resisting their call. And just as the Warriors guards are down, the weapons come out and the Warriors have to fight for their lives, literally, in order to escape. 

The interesting thing about the portrayal of the Lizzies is that they embody everything their male counterpoints do: sex and violence. Hill pulled no punches here, making the women just as sexual, promising the Warriors a good time, but also making out with each other during the party. They’re also just as violent as the other gangs, attacking the Warriors with the same vicious glee seen in the Baseball Furies and the Punks—not to mention their perfectly stealth trap as they walked the Warriors into their lair. Even when the gangs are gender-swapped as the Bizzies in the Warriors concept album, the core of the scene isn’t changed—the needing of a break for the weary Warriors ends up in a fight for their life; gender and sexuality hardly hinders the storytelling in this respect. “Can I have one as a snack?” the album even croons because even on the run, hormones are gonna hormone.

There are plenty of sexist things to pull apart in The Warriors—it’s a product of its time, after all—but Hill doesn’t flinch from depicting toxic masculinity or even sexual violence. Ajax, seeing a lone woman in the park, immediately goes on the prowl only to find himself faced with an undercover cop, putting the Warriors in peril as he’s arrested. They have to leave him to his choices as they continue their run. The album flips this scene, making Ajax spoiling for a fight after a man catcalls her from the bench “you’d look prettier if you smile.” Rather than a sexual assault from the film, the album’s Ajax does what “she does best / starting a fight” and lets the feminine rage boil over and rails on him up so that he “catcalled your last.” Ajax is still arrested, but proclaims: 

The women of The Warriors not only hold their own, but, as Cyrus asks in the opening, can most certainly dig it.