A while back (circa 2005), Tony Scott was attached to a remake of Walter Hill’s immortal 1979 action flick “The Warriors.” For those that are unfamiliar with the cult classic, it’s the story of a gang-controlled New York City. At a summit with all the gang members, the leader is shot, and a gang (the titular Warriors) framed. Now all the other gang members are after these guys (as well as the NYPD), and it becomes this fabulous sort of picaresque tale as they traverse this hellish New York City. Anyway…
Scott said that he would update the story, and that there would be no guns this time around. Instead, all the action would be centered around hand to hand combat and, presumably, kick ass karate moves. “The story is so generic, it’s like these guys are at point B and they need to get back to point A,” Scott once said. This was stupid, for sure, since we don’t know how many gang members slap people, but whatever. Time passed. Scott turned his attention to remaking “The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3,” which is out later this month, and everyone thought that the project was more or less dead. Cult movie fans everywhere breathed a sigh of relief.
Cut to present day. While talking to Rotten Tomatoes (via MTV) about ‘Pelham,’ Scott revealed that the remake is very much alive. And what’s more – he’s going to change it in even more essential ways. “I’m not doing a straight remake,” he told Rotten Tomatoes. “I love the original ‘Warriors’ and I’m using the same basic story. It’s really still 10 guys stuck at point B and they need to get back to point A. But I’m going to set it in Los Angeles and it’s going to be a kind of study of gang culture in LA today.” [ed. you gotta love his simple-minded A-B reading of the film].
LA? Seriously? Man. LA is a city that is so difficult to navigate around, and so easy to get lost in. It’s less a city than a collection of satellites. The wonderful thing about the first movie was watching our heroes get around – ride the New York subway, etc. – and how each borough was explored. So what? In the new one we’re going to watch the Warriors pile into a station wagon and get stuck on a highway for 45 minutes?
Scott goes on to describe the city: “It’s a city which is horizontal. New York is vertical, all skyscrapers, and Los Angeles is horizontal. I’m hoping to get a hundred thousand real gang-members standing on the Vincent Thomas Bridge for one shot.” Wow. This sounds totally trite and awful and you can put all the fucking gang members in the world on a bridge and it won’t make the movie any more interesting. Instead of thinking about how rancid this remake will be, why don’t we just take a moment and remember how awesome “True Romance” was? Ah, yes. That’s the stuff. – Drew Taylor
