Customer Reviews

The Warriors

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I was very excited to find this out of print book because I, like many others, love the movie, which is about a small Coney Island based gang falsely accused of killing a messiah-like leader named Cyrus, who intends to unite all the gangs. In the movie, the Warriors struggle to get back from the Bronx to home turf while being chased by various bizarre gangs (some of which are unforgettable) who are seeking revenge. Other than Ajax, the members in the Warriors seem fairly decent and unthreatening.

The movie is based very loosely on the book, and certain scenes are roughly parallel. However, Sol Yurick's goal is to portray the violence and banality of gang-life. The principles (here called the "Coney Island Dominators") commit acts of shocking violence, including gang rape of a young woman, who, in the movie, is unscathed, and ends up as Swan's girlfriend. At the end of the book, there is no dramatic scene on the beach where the truth is learned, but rather, the author spotlights one of the gang-members who is unable to satisfy his insatiable hunger, which I assume is a metaphor for an empty, meaningless life.

In sum, I recommend this book, but don't expect to read a script for the movie, which, to be honest, I enjoyed quite a bit more.

This novel is actually quite good. In the beginning it feels a bit campy and maybe reads like an uninformed idyll. I couldn't imagine today's gangs coming together in a park and I have doubts as to whether or not street gangs of the sixties could even entertain the notion. I guess the mechanism used is a bit clumsy but it does get the story going and create the parrallels between a "modern" day street-gang and the isolated greek warriors of The Anabasis, which inspired this novel.

Once we get away from the structure of the novel and into the moment to moment exchanges betweeen the characters and their environment, it all becomes rather real. There is something incredible about the way the story moves from covering the collective "group" perspective into filtering through and following the individual remnants that leaves both Catcher in the Rye (with its singular perspective) and Lord of the Flies (with its various group perspectives) feeling a little flat.

By the time the main character, Hinton is strolling through the Times Square arcades, he is every bit as well realized as Mr. Caulfield and the environment is as vivid as any ever penned.

Yurick like Salinger, knows his subject, and although at first glance some of the behavior may seem foreign and far-fetched, it is really a matter of being reminded of both how young these "Warriors" actually are, and like the Geek soldiers that they imitate, how the blood on their hands does little to diminish their actual innocene. It is really a process of realizing how fast we mature and the devastating effect of maturity on our imagination.

I highly recommend the book but be warned, if your expecting the baseball furies to pop out at the park with bats-a-swinging, you may be a bit dissapointed, although shot on location in New York, Hollywood definitely has its influence.

There are moments where the movie does appear to reflect the novel, and these moments only set you up for great surprises when the watered-down movie takes the easy way out, the novel trudges forward; bold and unashamed.

I just recently saw the movie and became obsessed with it, so the next logical step was to read the book. It took me a few days to find it though, and in the meantime I read a lot of things about it, which might have been a mistake but whatever. Aparently it was a lot more violent than the movie, and a lot of people found it less satisfying because of this. Views on it are pretty polarized. Either people love it and put it up there with (or even above) Lord of the Flies, or they just don't get it and are turned off by how different it is from the film.
The edition I found has a new introduction by the author that talks about how it came to be written and his reaction to the film when it was made. He didn't like the film. He thought they made to many changes and that it only coincidentally resembled his novel. Things like making the gang mixed instead of all black, not using the slang that he worked so hard to portray accurately (apparently he sat in a rented van for weeks observing urban gangs talk and interact) and he thought the acting was generally poor. I can see where he's going with these things. it's his vision and they missed it, but I don't really agree. The changes that were made to the movie were pretty necessary. I don't really think it would have worked or had the same appeal if it was done exactly like the book. If for no other reason that it was written in the mid 60's and the movie made in the late 70's, times had changed a lot.
This sense of anachronism was something that I had to keep in mind as I read it. At first it was hard to get a hang of the narrative, but I got used to it. I think it helped a little that I was prepared by the author and other reviews. I had a better idea of what was meant to be important while I read it.
The plot points were more or less the same as the film. The only major difference is that in the book the gang is not directly blamed for the death that happens in the beginning. In the movie this is used as the driving force behind the numerous antagonists. But in the book it felt as though the entire city was already against them. The looming feeling of danger was all around them and it didn't need to have a coherant motive or reason to oppress them. I thought this was more subtle, but a lot more effective once I noticed it.
Since the danger is mostly intangible, and formed from their own perception of the world, it's much harder for them to overcome it. Instead of fighting other gangs to get home, they have to wrestle with one another and themselves to try and figure out what home is.
I had been warned about the violence, and it was there. But there was something strange about it. It was almost as if the violent acts were commited by the gang as a whole, and not the sum of it's parts. These were the things that the gang did to survive or keep face. But when each of them is taken away from that entity, they do not share the burden or guilt of it's actions. I will admit that they do some pretty terrible things, but in the end I did not hate them for it. They acted like a gang, not like a bunch of young boys. There's even a clear distinction of this in the text. The act of wearing or concealing the gang emblem had a real effect on the characters. A lot can be read into that, but I won't go into it here.
The end of the book was another thing that a lot of people took issue with. Some reviews I read said that it wasn't nearly as satisfying as the movie, that it just kind of stopped. I disagree with this completely. In the movie they reach their home and look back on it with a new kind of respect, and also the understanding that it is not the whole world. It's hinted that they will give up this life and leave. Maybe even grow up and become part of that bigger world.
In the book it doesn't just end. There's is something similar to that restlessness and need for change, but as with so many other things in the book, it's a lot more subtle.
I originally read this book to fuel my obsession with the movie. I wanted more of those characters and that city. Instead of getting just more though, reading the book was almost a whole different experience, and just as rewarding. In the end I thought it was very good. I greatly apreciate it's differences from the fim. In his introction to the book the author says that even though the movie is a cult classic and helped define a generation, no one really knows that it was based on a book. This amuses him because without the book there would have been no movie. I'm glad that I tracked it down and am part of that smaller minority.

it was what i expected and i read a lot about the book on wikipedia, so i knew what i was getting into. in my honest opinion, the book was pretty good and captured the feel and vibe of the time, it was violent but not in the flashy way the movie is. you should also know this, though the book and movie share the same title and a few similarities, they are not the same, by a longshot. don't expect to get the movie in written form or you'll be greatly disappointed.

Great book. Well written. Gets you involved with the characters. Easy to read.
Makes you want for the story to not end. Whether you have seen the film or not this is a great read

A boring piece of tripe. As is often the case with "cult" novels, the fanboys grossly overrate them, skew the composite, and fool people into buying them. The cheap graphics of the book cover are indicative of what's inside. To say the movie was better, much better, is an understatement. The novel only survives in print because of the movie -- that's why I bought it. I suppose the book was controversial in the early 1960s because of its amoral tone and four lettered language -- and the controversy sold the book. If THE WARRIORS was first published today, it wouldn't sell a 100 copies. A lame plot line, unsympathetic characters, very little action, and a fizzle at the end. What a disappointment!

Sol Yurick admits in the author's notes that he wrote The Warriors while he was waiting for his real book to get published. I'm not going to say it's second rate, there are pieces that show inspiration, but it's not the epic I was expecting. Being a solid fan of the movie, I had to read it. After hearing it was based on Xenophon's Anabasis, I was doubly excited to get my hands on it. Now that I've read it, I wasn't thrilled. It's a story well-told, just not the story I was expecting or seeking.

(I) First saw this movie in 1978 when it was first released. At first take it was boring , but action improved by the second half of the movie. In this film, a representative gang of 7 men, known as the Warriors, based in Coney Island, finds themselves blamed for a crime they did not commit and forced to find their way home across forbidding gang territories. The crime was the execution of a leader named Cyrus- a man determined to use his gang influence to unite all New York City gangs. The crime was committed by a vengeful rival, determined to pin the crime on the Warriors. For the majority of the movie, The Warriors fight their way through territorial New York, sometimes losing a man in the process until the final three made it back home to Coney Island. Once there, a final showdown proved that the Warriors were a gang to be reckoned with.
This Ultimate Director's Cut was better than the original shown in the theatres and also includes uplifting background music, incl. a song by Joe Walsh, 'In The City' which sets the tone for the whole movie. It is a somewhat violently-themed movie, so recommended as rated R.
(Help with review from Jamsinn27)*

I enjoyed the book much more than the movie for the simple fact that it felt real. Real slang, real characters, overall a gang-related, gritty novel. It doesn't have the comic-book feel that the movie had (which is part of the appeal of the movie I know).

One of the best I've read.

cool book quite different from the film..and as a fan wasnt expecting it.charachters in the book put a relatively new twist on my perception of it both film and book.
good though.